PolitiFarce

A water drop and ripples

Who is the real audience for Biden’s vax-mandate speech?

By Marc Comtois | September 10, 2021 |

According to John Podhoretz, Biden’s vax-mandate “speech was a Rube Goldberg message aimed at neurotic vaccinated people”.  Pohhoretz continues: He told the American people without qualification that fully vaccinated people are at incredibly low risk: “Only 1 out of every 160,000 fully vaccinated Americans was hospitalized for COVID per day.” Then he promised to shield…

JEEPers, PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year Turns Out to Be True

By Monique Chartier | January 19, 2013 |

Thanks to John Loughlin for bringing this to my attention. The original statement by the Romney campaign that was politifact-“checked”: [Mitt Romney] Says Barack Obama “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China” at the cost of American jobs. And a headline from Reuters on Thursday. Fiat sees at least 100,000…

Did They Just Set Up a Skating Rink in Hades? PolitiFact Changes a Ruling

By Monique Chartier | September 18, 2012 |

As I just remarked via e-mail to GoLocalProv’s Dan McGowan, I had almost wrapped up a stinging post this evening about PolitiFact’s latest rating of a statement by Brendan Doherty. The post would have been entitled Doherty Was Right; PolitiFact Is Wrong – Cicilline “Volunteer” Ramirez Not The Source of the Funds That Repaid His…

Delaying the Independent Auditor: A Misinterpreted Deadline and No Signed Confession Facilitate This Cicilline-Friendly Rating

By Monique Chartier | September 15, 2012 |

Ah, the good times are so fleeting. PolitiFact has rated one of the items on the Doherty campaign’s Top 10 List of David Ciciline’s Most Serious Deceptions. (Love the concept, by the way. Bad elected officials need to be called out and their official misdeeds highlighted.) We decided to look at number four, which focused…

Differences in Sources Suggest RI Does in Fact Have Most Burdensome Mandates

By Justin Katz | August 21, 2012 |

Admittedly, I’ve been griping about PolitiFact from the sidelines almost since it entered the field.  For many of the uses that the reporters put it toward, the notion of entirely objective facts is as absurd as the notion of entirely objective reporters.  The simplistic (albeit marketable) Truth-o-Meter emphasizes the point; something’s being arguable is not…

Truth Once Again Blowin’ In The Wind At PolitiFact

By Monique Chartier | June 3, 2012 |

With regard to the Deepwater Wind project, one question and one question only matters: Is it viable; does it break ground without the government mandating artificially high electric rates? The answer is a definite “No”! Unfortunately, with its rating today of a statement by Lisa Blais, PolitiFact fogs this, the single most important aspect of…

Unemployability of Illegal Alien Students – Rating the Blindingly Obvious

By Monique Chartier | May 13, 2012 |

PolitiFact decided to rate the statement by RIILE’s Terry Gorman that When these [undocumented] students graduate from college, they’re still illegal aliens. They cannot get a job. They rate it a “True”. As they gave such a rating to someone with whom I agree on the underlying issue, I’m sorry to complain, really, I am.…

Abortion Question Shows PolitiFact RI’s Bias and Ignorance

By Justin Katz | April 19, 2012 |

It’s a tedious exercise reviewing the ways in which the pretense of ostensibly neutral journalists to judge truth via PolitiFact investigations is tilted severely toward their political leanings. Indeed, if it weren’t for an explicit meter and the assertion that they are dealing only in facts, it wouldn’t be worth the effort. But in order…

Cicilline Gifted Another Mostly True From Politifact — Seriously?

By Patrick Laverty | January 6, 2012 |

Oh my goodness. That was my reaction to this finding. Really? I can really handle word-jockeying and picking apart statements word by word. I can handle claiming that “words have meaning” when coming up with the justification for the ruling, but at least be consistent about it! My question is that if I say I…

Bending the Truth in Cicilline’s Favor

By Justin Katz | January 2, 2012 |

In an illustration of how its methods can serve the politicians that the editors like — covering their fundamental dishonesty with a focus on minutia — PolitiFact Rhode Island has given David Cicilline a “half true” for this: “Earlier this week, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives — with the enthusiastic support of Sarah Palin, Texas…