FACT CHECKER ALERT_FactCheck.org Is Wrong. California’s LGBT Therapy Ban Could Ban Bibles

 

Image CreditGeorge Bannister / Flickr

 

By: Robert Gagnon

April 30, 2018

 

FactCheck.org has joined Snopes as another sneaky liar with their article on Apr. 25 entitled “California Bill Wouldn’t Ban the Bible.” Although per the “Editor’s note,” “FactCheck.org describes itself is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk false stories,” it is not without its left-wing biases.

Article author Angelo Fichera claims that California Assembly Bill 2943 has no bearing on the sale not only of the Bible but also of any Christian book that makes the case, in whole or part, for orientation, identity, or behavior change. Although Fichera asserts claims about AB 2943 banning books “are indeed not supported by the language in the legislation,” he does not actually analyze the contents of the bill.

The extent of his “research” is to cite a tweet from the bill’s author, California assemblyman Evan Low, and an email from attorney Anthony J. Samson, a registered state lobbyist who “provided Low with technical assistance on the bill.” Another quote from Samson is now offered in the updated Snopes article.

Low and Samson are hardly impartial sources. They have a vested interest in getting the bill passed into law before massive opposition can galvanize. FactCheck.org never bothered to do the most basic investigative work of all: “factcheck” the bill’s author and his assisting attorney in relation to the language of AB 2943.

FactCheck.org would never take Donald Trump’s or Jeff Sessions’s word for what a certain anti-immigration bill of theirs says. So why does FactCheck.org take the word of Low and Samson about what AB 2943 allegedly says, particularly since it appears to be at odds with the wording of the bill?

Courts Have Trashed Bill History in LGBT Cases

Low tweeted on Apr. 22: “A church or individual may still practice conversion therapy if they do so without charging for this fraudulent service. It does not ban bibles nor does it ban the basic sales of books as some would have you believe.” To this we can add Low’s statement to the state assembly just minutes before the vote, in which he alleged the sale of a book is not an actual conversion therapy “practice,” which the bill bans.

Samson sent an email to FactCheck.org saying: “The bill by its express terms is limited to the practice of conversion therapy as a commercial service in exchange for monetary compensation.” Samson added in an email to Snopes: “It does not apply to the sale of books or any other kind of goods, and it does not prevent anyone from speaking or writing on the subject of conversion therapy in any forum.”

Let’s review what AB 2943 says, as opposed to how Low and Samson characterize it. That’s critical because the wording is what ultimately determines its legal enforcement. Yes, California courts may consider the legislative history of a bill when ruling on its meaning, but “only where statutory language is ambiguous.” Even then, it is not binding and comprises only one component of the court’s opinion. A court could easily decide that the wording of AB 2943 is not ambiguous on this point, as we shall see.

In addition, past experience suggests legislative history often means relatively little in relation to court decisions on LGBT matters. The classic examples are the same-sex marriage decisions of the California Supreme Court in 2008 (4-3), the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in 2010, and the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015 (5-4), all of which were based on finding a “fundamental right” to same-sex marriage in the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Yet this amendment addressed citizen rights of former slaves, not “gay marriage.” No one who had a hand in formulating and passing this amendment in 1866-68 would have done so if it had occurred to them that same-sex marriage could be a possible result. Of what value was legislative history here? None.

By the same token, did the Obama administration honor the legislative history of Title IX (passed in 1972) when it decided to interpret “sex discrimination” to include “gender identity” and “sexual orientation”? Who could have imagined that when “sexual orientation” non-discrimination laws were passed in the 1980s and 1990s it would lead to Christian bakers, florists, and photographers being fined tens of thousands of dollars and put out of business? Or children compelled to undergo gender identity indoctrination from kindergarten on?

What AB 2943 Actually Says Implies Bible Bans

You might think that AB 2943 applies only to psychotherapeutic “practices” in contradistinction to other “efforts.” You would be wrong. “This bill intends to make clear that sexual orientation change efforts are an unlawful practice under California’s Consumer Legal Remedies Act,” the bill says. Ergo, any “effort” at “sexual orientation change” constitutes “an unlawful practice.”

Moreover, “‘sexual orientation change efforts’ means any practices that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation.” Catch that? “Any practices,” not exclusively those of a psychotherapeutic sort.

You might suppose that AB 2943 has restraints on its application to avoid encroachments on freedoms of speech and religion. You would be wrong. The bill specifies only one restraint: These “sexual orientation change efforts” must occur in the context of a “transaction intended to result, or which results, in the sale or lease of goods or services to any consumer.” Obviously, the sale of a book is a “transaction” that “results in the sale . . . of goods . . . to any consumer.”

Even so, you might surmise that the bill applies only to mental health professionals and not also to religious organizations or individuals, since that limitation existed in the 2012 law forbidding sexual orientation change therapy for minors. You would be wrong. AB 2943 applies to “unfair or deceptive acts or practices undertaken by any person in a transaction intended to result, or which results, in the sale or lease of goods or services to any consumer” (my emphasis).

You might think that “sexual orientation change efforts” entails only efforts “to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.” You would be wrong. According to the bill, it includes also “efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions.” Thus, any sale of a book that makes statements that homosexual practice or transgender identification are immoral actions that people ought not to commit falls easily under the purview of AB 2943.

You might think that a transaction has to take place before the law’s penalty can apply. You would be wrong. Also prohibited by this bill is “advertising, offering for sale, or selling a financial product that is illegal.” Merely advertising (e.g., on one’s Facebook page or some other Internet site) or offering for sale (e.g., on a table at a conference, regardless of whether copies are sold) “a financial product” that advocates a change of attractions, behavior, or gender expression away from the “LGBTQ” mantra is fair game.

You might think (by now a little flustered) that at least the prohibited advertising is limited to advertising a counselor’s practice. You would be wrong. It rather includes (to judge from a stipulation of the bill regarding veterans affairs) “advertising or promoting any event, presentation, seminar, workshop, or other public gathering.”

Thus, any conference or lecture would apply if a fee is charged for attending or if “goods or services” are advertised or made available in the course of the “event.” Indeed, I can’t see why this wouldn’t also apply to a course offered at a college or seminary if tuition is charged for that course.

Bill’s Author Agrees It Can Apply to Churches

Now let’s go back and see how the bill’s actual wording applies to Low and Samson’s remarks. Low’s first comment in his tweet is a devastating new admission: “A church or individual may still practice conversion therapy if they do so without charging for this fraudulent service.” The flipside of this statement is that “a church or individual” cannot “practice conversion therapy” if there is a charge for the service.

There is no puzzling over whether the sale of ‘books’ could count as a sale of ‘goods.’ It’s obvious.

Contrary to what many supporters of the bill have been saying, the bill’s application extends beyond mental health professionals (note that the Snopes article claims this is unclear). There is no exemption for religious instruction. We now have confirmation from AB 2943’s author that the bill would indeed apply “to a pastor, Bible study or house church leader, member of a parachurch organization working to help people afflicted by same-sex attractions, or indeed anybody who attempts change if goods or services involve an exchange of funds.”

AB 2493’s wording does not support Low’s second statement: “It does not ban bibles nor does it ban the basic sales of books as some would have you believe.” The only way that such a statement, particularly the second half, could be true is if the sale of a book were not included as “a transaction . . . which results in the sale . . . of goods . . . to any consumer” or did not come under the heading of “selling a financial product.” It is difficult to see how that could be the case.

For example, the California government’s own guide to “Understanding California’s Sales Tax” gives as its first example of how “sales tax . . . depends on the tax rate and the dollar value of the goods sold” that of a retailer who “sells five books costing $20 each” at a tax rate of 8 percent (my emphases). There is no puzzling over whether the sale of “books” could count as a sale of “goods.” It’s obvious.

“Goods” are broadly defined in AB 2943 as “tangible [movable] chattels bought or leased for use primarily for personal, family, or household purposes.” By what rationale, then, can Low claim the sale of books is excluded from the bill’s designation “sale of goods”? If Low were so concerned to exclude book sales from his bill, he would have to have excluded “books” from the category of “goods” explicitly.

People Can Be Prosecuted for Recommending Books

Oddly, Low also claims AB 2943 does not “ban the basic sales of books.” What limitation does the adjective “basic” place on “sales”? Does he mean only book sales not made in conjunction with other efforts to change the behavior, identity, or attractions of specific individuals? His qualification reminds me of constitutional lawyer David French’s observation in a recent National Review article.

While the state might not immediately ban the sale of certain books, it could prosecute someone who recommended or shared such books.

To be sure, it is probably “too much even for [the California government] to sweep through Christian bookstores looking for books” that caution against homosexual practice or transgenderism, although French hastens to add that “the statute would empower such an action.” Nevertheless, “it’s far more likely that the recommendation or sharing of certain kinds of Christian books and other written materials would be deemed evidence of fraud and would present a core part of the case against a minister or counselor.”

In other words, while the state might not immediately ban the sale of certain books, it could prosecute someone who recommended or shared such books with a person struggling with same-sex or transgender desires. The state could also prosecute someone who, at an event in which books advocating against homosexual practice or transgenderism are sold, urges homosexually active or transgender-identified persons in an audience to change their behavior.

After people adjust to this draconian step, the state might well decide to use the law to ban books outright. In the meantime, as French adds, “the law would loom over booksellers and churches, establishing a chilling effect and providing a pretext for even more secular booksellers to refrain from stocking certain Christian titles.”

If Money Changes Hands, This Bill Applies

Samson makes an even more blatant distortion about books in the updated Snopes article, claiming AB 2943 “does not apply to the sale of books or any other kind of goods.” Pray tell, then, what exactly is the bill talking about when it refers to “unfair or deceptive acts or practices . . . intended to result, or which results, in the sale or lease of goods or services to any consumer” (my emphasis)? The sale of “goods” is mentioned a whopping 18 times in the bill in connection with fraudulent practices.

If Samson had intended the limitations he specifies in his email, why didn’t he advise Low to put them in the bill?

Samson adds: “It does not prevent anyone from speaking or writing on the subject of conversion therapy in any forum” (my emphases). If he had said “everyone,” he would be correct (a monetary transaction is required); “anyone” is certainly false. The bill is clear that it pertains to “anyone” involved in “advertising, offering to engage in, or engaging in sexual orientation change efforts with an individual,” broadly defined as “any practices that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation” or “behaviors or gender expressions,” where a monetary transaction is entailed.

There is no limitation in the bill itself placed on venue (office, private residence, church, conference hall, auditorium, classroom), the mode of communication (lecture, question-and-answer counseling, facilitated small-group discussion, writing), or the number of persons that may be present at a given event.

The Consumer Legal Remedies Act does not limit “unlawful, unfair, or fraudulent business practices” to discussions with a single individual. One can just as well engage in such practices in a classroom setting as in a one-on-one session. If Samson had intended the limitations he specifies in his email, why didn’t he advise Low to put them in the bill?

Samson’s comment in the FactCheck.org article, which is repeated in the updated Snopes article, is a masterpiece of dissembling: “The bill by its express terms is limited to the practice of conversion therapy as a commercial service in exchange for monetary compensation.” One who hasn’t read the bill but reads this description would likely conclude that “the practice of conversion therapy” means only the practice of reparative therapy or some other psychotherapeutic practice engaged in by mental health professionals. As we have shown, one would be wrong.

What’s the bottom line? Either Low and Samson are deliberately misrepresenting matters to secure passage of this bill, or they have ignorantly constructed one of the most poorly worded bills imaginable. Whichever answer one goes with, the end result is the same: AB 2943 does not exempt from state action any oral or written communications associated with a monetary transaction that convey, in whole or part, that people should stop engaging in homosexual practice or expressing themselves as a gender at odds with their biological sex established before birth.

To those tempted to accept Low and Samson’s assurance I say: Caveat emptor. [SOURCE]

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Robert A. J. Gagnon, PhD, is the author of "The Bible and Homosexual Practice" (Abingdon) and co-author of "Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views" (Fortress). For 24 years he was a professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He is currently professor of theology at Houston Baptist University and Theological Seminary.

Robert Gagnon

FACT CHECKER ALERT_The Drones Who Work At Snopes: When Left-Wing ‘Fact-Checker’ Snopes Tried To Deplatform Babylon Bee

 

Image Credithttps://babylonbee.com/news/georgia-lawmaker-claims-chick-fil-a-employee-told-her-to-go-back-to-where-she-came-from-later-clarifies-he-actually-just-said-my-pleasure

By Chrissy Clark
July 30, 2019

The fact-checking website Snopes.com, wrote a “fact-check” article questioning the satirical nature of the Babylon Bee.

Snopes has fact-checked the Babylon Bee many times before. An insider to the fact-check world told The Federalist that Snopes readers will send the fact-check site articles from the Babylon Bee to ask whether they are true or not.

Regardless of Snopes’ original intentions with fact-checking satire, an article it published today took an opinionated aim at the Babylon Bee. Some pundits have even said Snopes is actively working to deplatform and delegitimize the Babylon Bee.

The Babylon Bee wrote a satirical piece on a recent news story regarding a woman who lied about being told to “go back to where she came from” by a white male in a grocery store. The woman was a Democratic Georgia lawmaker who was evidently using the phrase “go back to where you came from” in light of President Trump’s tweets.

In the satirical piece, the Babylon Bee made fun of the story by saying the woman was told to “go back to where she came from” by a Chick-fil-a employee.

The subhead of the Snopes “fact-check” reads, “We’re not sure if fanning the flames of controversy and muddying the details of a news story classify an article as ‘satire.'”

Next, Snopes said the Babylon Bee made up a fictionalized story about a real-life news event instead of making a satirical point.

“While this real-world incident stirred up a good amount of online anger, it wasn’t quite outrageous enough for the entertainment website Babylon Bee,” Snopes said. “In an apparent attempt to maximize the online indignation, this website published a fictionalized version of the story, changing the location to Chick-fil-A, a fast-food restaurant known for its CEO’s opposition to same-sex marriage.”

Snopes called the satirical article, which obviously pokes fun at a real life event, a fictionalized version of the story. “The Babylon Bee has tried to fool readers with its brand of satire in the past,” it said.

Demonstrating a lack of objectivity, the article continued, calling the Babylon Bee a “ruse,” which literally means “an action intended to deceive someone.”

Snopes using its platform to say the Babylon Bee’s brand of satire is a threat to facts misses the most important fact: It’s satire!

The Babylon Bee released an official statement highlighting the consequences this Snopes article may have on it.

Thanks to the 2016 election cycle, Facebook has partnered with fact-checking websites such as Snopes to combat “fake news.” Snopes, however, categorizes Babylon Bee articles as “fake news.” This threatens the publications ability to share its content.

While Facebook apologized for hiding Babylon Bee content in the past, another “fake news” review could leave the Babylon Bee without access to Facebook and threatens its ability to monetize.

While Snopes ended its fact-checking partnership with Facebook in February of 2019, they may be setting a precedent for other fact-checking sites.

The Babylon Bee’s founder, Adam Ford, tweeted his thoughts on this poor reporting in a long thread. [SOURCE]

FACT CHECKER ALERT_Who's Checking The Checkers?: How PolitiFact Slants Its Truth Ratings Against Republicans

 

Image CreditCrush Rush / Shutterstock.com

 

Matt Shapiro
December 29, 2016

In the last article, we that showed top fact-checking website PolitiFact generally rates Republicans as less honest than Democrats and their style betrays the need to constantly explain why Republican statements that seem true are actually false. While this approach gives us some insight into how PolitiFact skews against Republicans, another important component is which facts they choose to check.

It is extremely hard to pin down exactly which facts PolitiFact declines to check. We could argue all day about individual articles, but how do you show bias in which statements they choose to evaluate? How do you look at the facts that weren’t checked?

Our first stab at this question came from asking which lies each candidate was famous for and checking to see how PolitiFact evaluated them. These are necessarily going to be somewhat subjective, but even so the results were instructive. With Donald Trump, we discovered the lies that were best-known were usually checked and frequently re-checked later on. All but one was marked as “False” or “Pants on Fire”.

Donald Trump’s Top 5 Lies

1. Claiming He Did Not Support the Iraq War

6 Checks: Mostly False False, False, False, False, False.

PolitiFact checked this. And checked it and checked it and, just in case they missed something, they checked it again. Then they checked it.

They checked Trump’s exact statement six separate times, finding it false each time. Keep in mind that PolitiFact frequently points back to the sum total of all their checks when determining which politician is more or less truthful, so this lie is counted as six separate falsehoods.

2. Claims about President Obama’s Birth Certificate

8 Checks: False, False, False, False, False, Pants on Fire!, Full Flop.

Politifact checked Trump on issues related to President Obama’s birth certificate a total of eight times. The checked four times on whether Hillary Clinton had anything to do with starting the birther rumor, two times on statements that were skeptical of Obama’s birth status, once on whether he brought the issue to a close and, finally, a “Full Flop” rating when Trump admitted that Obama was born in Hawaii.

3. Claiming He Had No Relationship With Vladimir Putin

1 Check: Full Flop.

PolitiFact checked this and rated it as a “Full Flop” (Trump said it, then claimed he never said it).

4. Claims of Large-Scale Voter Fraud

5 Checks: Pants on Fire!, Pants on Fire!, Pants on Fire!, Pants on Fire!, Pants on Fire!

PolitiFact rated Trump’s claim that there was large-scale voter fraud on and before Election Day as “Pants on Fire.” We tried to limit this to this very specific claim. Trump made several other statements related to the idea of voter fraud that were also checked and found to be false.

5. Claimed Hillary Would Let 650 Million Immigrants In

1 Check: Pants on Fire!

PolitiFact checked this claim (which wandered between 600 million and 650 million) and found it to be “Pants on Fire.”

Hillary Clinton’s Top 5 Lies

The Hillary Clinton PolitiFact story was far stranger than we anticipated. Not only does PolitiFact not check Clinton as frequently, but they also often fact-check her by proxy. Strange as it may seem, PolitiFact would often look at someone talking about a Clinton statement and then fact-check the person talking about Clinton’s statement instead of fact-checking Clinton on the statement she made.

Of these five statements, PolitiFact checked Hillary four times and did two “fact checks by proxy,” compared to the 21 fact checks of Trump’s five statements.

1. Claimed She Didn’t Send Classified Emails

2 Checks and 1 “Check by Proxy”: Checked David Cicilline – Half True, False, Mostly True.

Clinton stated repeatedly that she did not send any classified emails. PolitiFact checked this a few times as the story unfolded and gave it a variety of ratings.

Their first rating was when they fact-checked not Clinton, but Rep. David Cicilline saying that the former secretary of state claimed she didn’t send any classified emails. They rated Cicilline’s claim “Half True.” Nine months later, they would rate Clinton’s statement that she didn’t receive or send classified info as “False.” Two months later, they took her claim that the emails didn’t have classified headers and rated it “Mostly True.”

2. Claim She Landed in Bosnia Under Sniper Fire

1 Check: Pants On Fire!

PolitiFact checked Clinton on this claim during the 2008 presidential primary and rated it “Pants on Fire.”

3. Claimed She Was in New York City on 9/11

Not Checked.

We did not find any PolitiFact fact check on this statement.

4. Claimed the FBI Was Fine with Her Email Use

1 Check: Pants on Fire!

PolitiFact checked Clinton on this claim in August and rated it “Pants on Fire.”

5. Claim She was Named After Sir Edmund Hillary

1 “Check by Proxy”: Sen. Mitch McConnell, rated “Half True.”

PolitiFact did check this statement, but only by proxy. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell noted that Clinton has a history of lying and included her statement that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary. PolitiFact verified that he was correct, but proposed that it is possible a young Hillary’s parents lied to her about it. Because they could not verify that this was an intentional lie, they rated McConnell’s statement as “Half True.”

The simplest explanation for the disparity in lies checked between Trump and Clinton is that when Hillary gets caught in a lie, she stops lying, while Trump continues lying.

This is not something the evidence seems to support. Barack Obama continues to this day to claim that women make 77 cents on the dollar compared to men. PolitiFact rated this as “Mostly False” in 2012, but changed their rating to “Mostly True” when Obama made the same statement in the State of the Union but with fewer details. Their excuse was that Obama’s claim was misleading but technically true if you look at data with the least possible context. (This is a standard PolitiFact prefers for Democrats but abhors applying to Republicans.) Obama (and most Democrats) continue to this day to make this incredibly misleading claim.

Yet Mitt Romney was checked five times (each one rated false) for making the arguably true statement that Obama apologized for the United States when visiting foreign countries after being elected in 2008. PolitiFact found Romney was right that Obama expressed regret over recent U.S. policy, then proceeded to go on a 3,000-word diatribe about what exactly constitutes an “apology.”

The pattern is there: PolitiFact checks Republicans repeatedly for the same facts, especially if they feel they can rate them “false.” Keep in mind that PolitiFact routinely touts its aggregate truth ratings, so running up the “false” scoreboard on Republicans matters when they release their “who is more honest” data stories.

Even so, this review of candidate lies suffers from the fact that we have to, by necessity, pick and choose the facts to review and look individually to see if PolitiFact has checked them. It would be instructive to see how often PolitiFact chooses to fact-check individual politicians. Let’s take the fascinating case of Sen. Marco Rubio.

Is a Senate Candidate More Important Than the House Speaker?

Rubio was the junior senator from Florida for nearly six years before coming in third place in the 2016 Republican primary. Yet PolitiFact was checking him nearly every month since a year before he was elected to the Senate.

Rubio was fact-checked as many times before he took office than long-time senator and erstwhile Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been checked in his entire career. Before he even started his presidential campaign Rubio was fact-checked 10 times more Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren has been during her tenure.

Below is a segmentation of fact checks for Clinton, Rubio, and Reid, showing where in their careers PolitiFact has checked their statements.

Before he even announced his run for president, PolitiFact had checked Rubio more times (87 fact-checks) than they had checked Clinton during her entire 2008 presidential run (83 fact-checks). It seems over-eager to check a four-year junior senator more than a presidential candidate, vice president, Senate majority leader, and speaker of the House.

Nor was Rubio alone in this. Before he ran for president, Sen. Ted Cruz was fact-checked 46 times, more than any Democratic senator we checked. House Speaker Paul Ryan was fact-checked nearly twice as often as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, even if you take out every single fact check from the time period in which he was the Republican vice presidential nominee. Michelle Bachmann (remember her? Three-term congresswoman who placed sixth in the Iowa caucus) was fact-checked a stunning 51 times, nearly as many times as governor, senator, and vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine.

This would of course be a difficult metric to keep track of on a case-by-case basis, which is how fact-checking is done. But it is clear from the numbers that PolitiFact will, especially in off-election years, seek out a speech from a prominent Republican delivered at a conference or assembly and select a fact from the speech that they feel is inaccurate.

Donald Trump, the Democrat

One thing you may have noticed through this series is that the charts and data we’ve culled show a stark delineation between how PolitiFact treats Republicans versus Democrats. The major exceptions to the rules we’ve identified in PolitiFact ratings and analytics have been Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence. These exceptions seem important. After all, who could more exemplify the Republican Party than the incoming president and vice president elect?

It should be noted that all this data scraping and analysis was done before the election. As we planned this series, we were anticipating a deep dive into Hillary Clinton’s record, contrasting it with that of major Republicans. But Clinton suddenly appears less important than President-elect Trump.

Trump threw a wrench into my analysis. Here I was, with a fairly clean story about PolitiFact being particularly unfair to Republicans, rating them more harshly, unfairly calling them liars with alarming frequency. Then along comes a candidate who seems to take a more … um… “casual” approach to the truth, and who is easy to fact-check because his statements are so careless and brazen, and his every statement is spread across the world so quickly.

Now, while I’m talking about Trump in this article, most of the same things can be said about Pence. Pence has spent an enormous amount of time reinforcing or defending statements that Trump has made and most of Pence’s fact-checks are based on statements he made as Trump’s VP choice. As a result, PolitiFact rates Pence the third most “dishonest” Republican we checked.

“Only the third?” you may ask. “Who was in between Trump and Pence?” I’m so very glad you asked. The second most “dishonest” politician PolitiFact rated was Cruz. Let’s compare Cruz to Trump.

Trump Versus Cruz All Over Again

Note: For truth ratings, we used the following metric: True = 0, Mostly True = 1, Half True = 2, Mostly False = 3, False = 4, Pants on Fire = 5. This means that lower scores are “more truthful.” The higher a politician’s “truth score” is, the more PolitiFact has called him a liar.

In total truth ratings, Trump’s average rating was 3.2, slightly worse than “Mostly False” as an average. Cruz’s average rating was 2.8, slightly better than “Mostly False.” If we look at the truth values over the course of the primary, a couple things stand out:

We see that Cruz was rated as significantly more truthful than Trump in two months, August and November 2015. Cruz was fact-checked twice in August and thrice in November, while Trump was fact-checked a total of 23 times those two months. (Cruz was not fact-checked in June, when Trump announced his nomination.)

During the most important months of the primary campaign (December 2015 and January 2016) PolitiFact checked Cruz more frequently than Trump and became substantially harder on Cruz, rating him at nearly the same level of dishonesty as Trump. In the months following, the ratings of both candidates improved at about the same rate. Until Cruz withdrew from the race.

In the month after Cruz dropped out of the race, PolitiFact unleashed on Trump with five “Pants on Fire,” five “False,” three “Mostly False,” and one “Half True.” Before he clinched the nomination, Trump was portrayed as just a slightly more dishonest GOP candidate. After the nomination, he was portrayed as a flat-out liar.

Explaining Away Ted Cruz

Things get more interesting when we look at the nature of these fact-checks. We looked earlier at how longer fact-checks indicate PolitiFact feels the need to explain themselves in defending a rating that may be questionable. When we look at the word counts for Trump against almost any other Republican, Trump’s word counts do not fit with the pattern for Republicans, but the one for Democrats.

Articles calling Cruz a liar (“Mostly False,” “False,” or “Pants on Fire”) are 30 to 40 percent longer than the same ratings for Trump. This means that, while PolitiFact was comfortable giving the overall ratings impression that Cruz and Trump were both liars cut from the same cloth, they consistently felt the need to explain at length why Cruz was a liar (a pattern we see with nearly all Republicans).

In contrast, they treated Trump as a Democrat: When he lies, they state the facts plainly and let the matter rest.

PolitiFact’s Crying Wolf Syndrome

In this context, PolitiFact’s analysis of Trump reinforces the idea that the media has called Republicans liars for so long and with such frequency the charge has lost it sting. PolitiFact treated Mitt Romney as a serial liar, fraud, and cheat. They attacked Rubio, Cruz, and Ryan frequently and often unfairly.

But they treated Trump like they do Democrats: their fact-checking was short, clean, and to the point. It dealt only with the facts at hand and sourced those facts as simply as possible. In short, they treated him like a Democrat who isn’t very careful with the truth.

Unfortunately, it requires an in-depth analysis of their work to discover this. If you look only at the ratings in aggregate, the metric that they’ve used to build their brand and to slander Republicans for almost a decade, it looks like Donald Trump is just another Republican. [SOURCE]

Sounds Like A Sham Wow

July 04, 2008



Well, Vince from Sham Wow is quite a spokesman. This skinny, meth addict-ish squirell just twists and twists his way into history. He wore a headset while being filmed for his national spot, but I hardly think he'll have to continue on the phone bank crew for very long. He's famous now. Goodbye cheap headset, polo t-shirt, and eye-twitch. It's time to realize your glory.

Much like Obama. I mean, before last year, who really knew anything about him? His star has risen quickly. From his own books we know that he was raised for five years in Indonesia at a parochial school dominated by Islamic teachings. Some refer to it as a madrassa. However, the Obama camp is quick to refuse to call it that, as Barrack says that the academy allowed some students of different faiths to attend. We also know that he spent 5 more years in Hawaii. The private school he was admitted into is reportedly attained at an annual fee of $20,000. Read on to see a confirmation from the savvy, trusted buster of urban legends, lies, rumors, and untruths, we know of as Snopes.

Of his first father, we know this from Snopes: "[My father] was as African, I would learn, a Kenyan of the Luo tribe, born on the shores of Lake Victoria in a place called Alego. The village was poor, but his father, my other grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama; had been a prominent farmer, an elder of the tribe, a medicine man with healing powers. My father grew up herding his father's goats and attending the local school, set up by the British colonial administration, where he had shown great promise. He eventually won a scholarship to study in Nairobi; and then, on the eve of Kenyan independence, he had been selected by Kenyan leaders and American sponsors to attend a university in the United States." Obama has written (and spoken) at length about his father's returning to Africa from America to work for the Kenyan government, with that country's political turmoil eventually leaving him a "bitter drunk" and "a defeated, lonely bureaucrat."


Of his mother, we know this from Snopes: "For my mother, organized religion too often dressed up closed-mindedness in the garb of piety, cruelty and oppression in the cloak of righteousness.This isn't to say that she provided me with no religious instruction. In her mind, a working knowledge of the world's great religions was a necessary part of any well-rounded education. In our household the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology. On Easter or Christmas Day my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites. But I was made to understand that such religious samplings required no sustained commitment on my part. Religion was an expression of human culture, she would explain, not its wellspring, just one of the many ways — and not necessarily the best way — that man attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives.In sum, my mother viewed religion through the eyes of the anthropologist she would become; it was a phenomenon to be treated with a suitable respect, but with a suitable detachment as well."

From Snopes, we know this: "Barack Obama's parents separated when he was two years old, his father moving to Connecticut to continue his education before returning to Kenya. When the younger Obama was six years old, his mother married again, this time to Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian oil manager. Barack and his mother moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, where Obama spent 4-5 years attending both Muslim and Catholic schools before his mother sent him back to the United States to live with his maternal grandmother. The school Barack Obama attended in Indonesia was "Muslim" primarily in the sense that the preponderance of its student body was Muslim (because Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim country), but both the Muslim and Catholic schools he attended in Indonesia offered a few hours of religious instruction each week.In his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama elaborated on his early schooling, explaining that he attended both Catholic and Muslim schools in Indonesia; not out of any particular religious affiliation, but because his mother wanted him to obtain the best education possible under the circumstances: "During the five years that we would live with my stepfather in Indonesia, I was sent first to a neighborhood Catholic school and then to a predominantly Muslim school; in both cases, my mother was less concerned with me learning the catechism or puzzling out the meaning of the muezzin's call to evening prayer than she was with whether I was properly learning my multiplication tables."

Isn't it curious how much the author tries to assure the reader that attending these religious schools was by no means a testament that he received any religious instruction of any sort? Quite the opposite, in fact: his mother, a rebel in herself, after purposely avoiding any American, nay, Western choice for fathering her child, chooses to pay a lot of money to have her son attend not a secular academy or prepatory school befitting of someone who wouldn't take to receiving religious indoctrination, but these self-described schools of religious indoctrination indeed.What's interesting about Snopes, however, is how earnest they seem to be at disputing the notion that Obama IS a Muslim. I've been hearing for many months, now, about how ridiculous it is to think that he is a Muslim.

I really don't care as much about a person's faith if they're upfront about it, but the more I'm implored to NEVER believe something, I become a bit suspicious. When I read a supposedly bona fide rumor-busting source on these subjects such as Snopes, though, I expect to see unassailable sources in order to back up their claims.

I loose faith in Snopes when I see this: "Claim: Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim. He is quick to point out that, "He was once a Muslim, but that he also attended Catholic school." Obama's political handlers are attempting to make it appear that he is not a radical.
[Snopes response] Barack Obama never stated that he "was once a Muslim" (radical or otherwise), so his "handlers" have nothing to "conceal." Obama communications director Robert Gibbs noted that "Senator Obama has never been a Muslim. As a six-year-old in Catholic school, he studied the catechism." Barack Obama has been associated with the United Church of Christ since the mid-1980s, describes himself as a Christian, and says that he is "rooted in the Christian tradition."[end Snopes explanation]"

And that is that? Snopes "debunks" a myth by asking a campaign public relations specialist whether it's true or not?

To further buttress their contention, Snopes turns to these unbiased news organizations: CNN and AP: "Claim: Lolo Soetoro, the second husband of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, introduced his stepson to Islam. Obama was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta. Wahabism is the RADICAL teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world.
[Snopes response] The claim that Obama attended a radical Wahabbist school in Indonesia in the mid-1960s is exceedingly far-fetched, given that: The large Indonesian community resident in Mecca was a medium through which knowledge about Wahhabism reached Indonesia, but the community itself appears to have remained virtually immune to Wahhabi influences. In reality there was little direct influence of Wahhabism on Indonesian reformist thought until the 1970s.


So Snopes is satisfied that elements of dangerous, radical belief didn't waft through the halls of a mainly-Islamic school in Indonesia because A) philosophy books written in Indonesian reformist thought don't reflect a violent, jihad-centered movement's credo; and B) things in Indonesia APPEAR to be immune to Wahabiism! Move on, folks, no story here! It's "far-fetched" to look beneath the surface of philosophy tracts and magazines. Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, has over 8,300,000 people in it alone, a literacy rate over age 15 at 64%, with a religious breakdown at 77% Muslim, the rest a showing of Hindu and Christian, with only a scant 1.9% claiming to be nonreligious, so don't fault me if the authors of Snopes' claim that by their estimation, as Westerners who may or may not know this massive city's many layers, there doesn't APPEAR to be any influence of a brotherhood that has moved silently in the shadows of the Middle East for hundreds of years.

[Snopes admits] "Insight magazine claimed in a January 2007 article that Barack Obama spent at least four years attending what is variously described as a "madrassa," a "radical Muslim religious school," or a "Muslim seminary" in Indonesia, but CNN has more recently reported that its own investigation found those claims to be false: [R]eporting by CNN in Jakarta, Indonesia and Washington, D.C., shows the allegations that Obama attended a madrassa to be false. CNN dispatched Senior International Correspondent John Vause to Jakarta to investigate.He visited the Basuki school, which Obama attended from 1969 to 1971.


This should feel "odd", already, to the careful student of politics. Before I examine the naive notion that the leaders of this school, Basuki, wouldn't have quickly "adjusted" the appearances of this school for the famous visitors from CNN, I must voice my concern for unbiased reporting from CNN. I don't trust CNN because of a few things, among them being Ted Turner himself, and his outspoken attitude of America.

One of the other reasons is because of the fact that CNN and the New York Times were the only two American news companies to remain in Iraq after the first Gulf War. See, even though we won that war, we allowed Saddam to stay in place as a ruler. One of his privileges as supreme ruler of Iraq was the ability to censor all media video and script before it was to be broadcast or printed. When CBS, ABC, NBC, Reuters, AP, UPI, etc learned that they would have to submit all copy from their Iraq beaureau's to Saddam himself, they rightly opted to leave the country, citing journalistic integrity issues. They, of course, were used to an American way of looking at the news.

However, two American "journalist" firms allowed this relationship with the monster Saddam Hussein to exist. For 12 long years, the New York Times and CNN submitted all information coming out of their offices to Saddam before printing or airing. Any attempt to "uncover the truth" by these two organizations known as CNN and NYT should be met with high suspiscion from the beginning.

[Snopes continues] "This is a public school. We don't focus on religion," Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the Basuki school, told Vause. "In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don't give preferential treatment."Vause reported he saw boys and girls dressed in neat school uniforms playing outside the school, while teachers were dressed in Western-style clothes.


Well, case closed, then! I mean, if the teachers were in slacks and Oxford shirts, there MUST be no story, here! Deep investigative methods at CNN allow them to conclude what's in a student's heart by watching them play at recess. I feel relieved! :-)


[Snopes quotes] "I came here to Barack Obama's elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa ... like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Vause said on the 'Situation Room.' "I've been to those madrassas in Pakistan ... this school is nothing like that."


Ok, we'll just take your unbiased word for it. Thanks for flying over there to Jakarta to clear this up for us.


[Snopes continues] "Vause also interviewed one of Obama's Basuki classmates, Bandug Winadijanto [real hardcore investigative journalism at work, here, to find someone who is probably all too happy to paint an innocent picture for the famous news agency], who claims that not a lot has changed at the school since the two men were pupils. Insight reported that Obama's political opponents believed the school promoted Wahhabism, a fundamentalist form of Islam, "and are seeking to prove it."
"It's not (an) Islamic school. It's general," Winadijanto said. "There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian. ... So that's a mixed school."


I regret to remind the weary reader that these same Western reporters never bother to parse denominations, seemingly mollifying the oppressive qualities of Islam here in this story, when they report on Christianity. We never hear about Eric Rudolph, who shot an abortion doctor, about which particular twisted, insane sect or version of the Bible he followed, but only that he was a "Christian activist".

[Snopes] "The Associated Press reported similarly [surprise]:A spokesman for Indonesia's Ministry of Religious Affairs said claims that Obama studied at an Islamic school are groundless."SDN Menteng 1 is a public primary school that is open to people of all faiths," said the spokesman, Sutopo, who goes by only one name." [One name, eh? How reassuring for a high official]


[Snopes] "Moreover, he studied earlier at Fransiskus Assisi, which is clearly a Catholic school."Obama later transferred to SDN Menteng 1 the elite, secular elementary school at the center of the controversy. The school is public but is very competitive and has exceptionally high standards. It is located in one of the most affluent parts of Jakarta and attracts mostly middle- to upper-class students, among them several of former dictator Suharto's grandchildren.Indonesia is home to several of the most radical Islamic schools in Southeast Asia, some with alleged terrorist links. But Akmad Solichin, the vice principal at SDN, who proudly pointed to a photo of a young Barry Obama, as he was known, said his school is not one of them.


No story here, just move on. Don't even think about tracing the lives of a wide sampling of past graduates from this school, or anything complicated like that.

[Snopes]"Moreover, [this press release] by the Obama campaign affirmed that." [Ah, I see. A politician's campaign website is to always be trusted.]

[Snopes] "In the past week, many of you have read a now thoroughly-debunked story by Insight Magazine, owned by the Washington Times, which cites unnamed sources close to a political campaign that claim Senator Obama was enrolled for "at least four years" in an Indonesian "Madrassa". The article says the "sources" believe the Madrassa was "espousing Wahhabism," a form of radical Islam.All of the claims about Senator Obama's faith and education raised in the Insight Magazine story and repeated on Fox News are false. Senator Obama was raised in a secular household in Indonesia by his stepfather and mother. Obama's stepfather worked for a U.S. oil company, and sent his stepson to two years of Catholic school, as well as two years of public school. To be clear [because we just want to pound it into your brain], Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago. Furthermore, the Indonesian school Obama attended in Jakarta is a public school that is not and never has been a Madrassa."

So quit asking, allright? It's not like this is a rumor about, say, a *gasp* Republican, who may have gone AWOL from a national gaurd drill weekend 30 years ago. No, that deserves the press' devotion and tireless search for the truth. CBS didn't stop in 2004 when the Bush campaign told them there was no proof of official accusation of going AWOL from his or any gaurd unit when he was serving his time for America. Dan Rather researched and dug DEEP to discover the document which "proved" the truth in that case.

Here, though, in 2008, in the case of Barrack Hussein Obama, campaign spokesmen carry a lot more weight, or water, as the Sham Master Vince might show us.