By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Politics Discussion - The three headed dragon against Obama

Kasz216 on 18 May 2013
GameOver22 said:
Kasz216 said:
GameOver22 said:
dsgrue3 said:
GameOver22 said:

Because I don't think there is a truly objective viewpoint. Opinions are fine.....best example probably being Murrow's reporting on McCarthyism. The problem is, even with opinionated reporting, there will always be people who disagree. In some ways, I think the media often times tries to be too objective and doesn't call politicians out on their lies. They just try to take what politicians say and report it, with little to no fact checking. If there is anything we know, it's that politicians lie...... a lot....for meaningless reasons often times.

Sure there can.

"Airplane exploded today at 9:15 AM."

"Jim Boehner met with President Obama today to discuss (insert topic)" 

"Congressional Republicans vetoed the (insert bill) today by a margin of (insert vote)"

No need to add opinions to break the news to people.

I find you highly suspect now that you want the media's opinion about their own out of context quotations of politicians.

I think you're missing my point....I'm talking about philosophical objectivity....not whether the news can report a story without adding their opinion to it, which is why I don't like the term (I thinks it's a loaded term). I don't understand why its a bad thing for me to want politicians called out on their lies....it informs the public. If Obama starts citing some numbers to prove a point, I find it useful if the media can tell me whether those numbers are true or misconstrued. I personally find politifact to be one of the most useful news sources for this reason.....especially during debate season.


The only probably with Politifact is they often seem to have their answer first, and then work back what the poltician said.  Often lieng or taking out of context what was said to put in a false.  While making the point of difference for the other side.... and genrally just picking what stories they want that benefit them.

I stopped trusting Politifact a while ago, when I noticed they were paraphrasing and taking statements out of context to mean things that were never intended.  This doesn't help either...

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cspg/smartpolitics/2011/02/selection_bias_politifact_rate.php

That's why there are so many fact checkers out there right now... they're all biased... and they generally have different answers about what's true, half true or false... even on the same statements.  They'll all give you plenty of numbers to back i up too.

 

Heck you even get blogs fact checking the fact checkers

http://www.politifactbias.com/2013/03/rand-paul-filibuster-you-should-have.html

I won't deny that they take things out of context sometimes. I've seen it a few times, but part of the problem is that context is often difficult to identify. For the most part, I think politifact errs on the side of giving false ratings and taking statements too literally (that's just my assessment). As for the study.....I'm not sure about it. Once again, its just a simple count with no statistical analysis. I imagine a lot of the reason for their findings is just the political context, meaning there is going to be more Republican criticism during Democratic control, and the criticisms are more likely to get covered and be false.

Just a hypothesis, but I imagine you would get similar results that showed more false ratings for Democrats if politifact is around when Republicans have control of the government. I think there is definitely a selection bias, but I think it's more along the lines of finding false/misleading statements rather than a partisan bias. It's just that the out-party has more incentive to go negative, especially under unified control, when the out-party is more removed from the legislative process.


Except... Republicans ave had control of the government since Politifact's been around.  Presidency no... but congress?

Outside which, the blog tends to go out of it's way to point out examples where they specifically do treat similar cases differently... which tends to be how politifact operates.   They tend to give one party the benefit of the doubt, while being hyper literal with the other party... in specific sentences when not looking at the whole context of the speach.

Like it points out... a lot of this generally happens because they have no real methodological method in their research process.  They give one side the benefit of doubt and look further in their context... because they're paying more attention to one side naturally.



Around the Network
GameOver22 on 18 May 2013
Kasz216 said:
GameOver22 said:

I won't deny that they take things out of context sometimes. I've seen it a few times, but part of the problem is that context is often difficult to identify. For the most part, I think politifact errs on the side of giving false ratings and taking statements too literally (that's just my assessment). As for the study.....I'm not sure about it. Once again, its just a simple count with no statistical analysis. I imagine a lot of the reason for their findings is just the political context, meaning there is going to be more Republican criticism during Democratic control, and the criticisms are more likely to get covered and be false.

Just a hypothesis, but I imagine you would get similar results that showed more false ratings for Democrats if politifact is around when Republicans have control of the government. I think there is definitely a selection bias, but I think it's more along the lines of finding false/misleading statements rather than a partisan bias. It's just that the out-party has more incentive to go negative, especially under unified control, when the out-party is more removed from the legislative process.


Except... Republicans ave had control of the government since Politifact's been around.  Presidency no... but congress?

Outside which, the blog tends to go out of it's way to point out examples where they specifically do treat similar cases differently... which tends to be how politifact operates.   They tend to give one party the benefit of the doubt, while being hyper literal with the other party... in specific sentences when not looking at the whole context of the speach.

Like it points out... a lot of this generally happens because they have no real methodological method in their research process.  They give one side the benefit of doubt and look further in their context... because they're paying more attention to one side naturally.

I was talking about the study....covers Jan 2010 through Jan 2011, which would have been around 1 month of Republcian control of the House. I don't know how Republicans controlling the House counts as Republican control of the government, which is why I specifically mentioned unified control. As for the blog, I don't typically trust blogs unless I actually know the authors (typically academic blogs). Just a glance at their analyses leaves me skeptical though.....they aren't really any better and take the few politifact assessments I looked at out of context (selectively choosing to criticize certain aspects of the analyses and leave out other aspects that don't support their argument).



Kasz216 on 18 May 2013
GameOver22 said:
Kasz216 said:
GameOver22 said:

I won't deny that they take things out of context sometimes. I've seen it a few times, but part of the problem is that context is often difficult to identify. For the most part, I think politifact errs on the side of giving false ratings and taking statements too literally (that's just my assessment). As for the study.....I'm not sure about it. Once again, its just a simple count with no statistical analysis. I imagine a lot of the reason for their findings is just the political context, meaning there is going to be more Republican criticism during Democratic control, and the criticisms are more likely to get covered and be false.

Just a hypothesis, but I imagine you would get similar results that showed more false ratings for Democrats if politifact is around when Republicans have control of the government. I think there is definitely a selection bias, but I think it's more along the lines of finding false/misleading statements rather than a partisan bias. It's just that the out-party has more incentive to go negative, especially under unified control, when the out-party is more removed from the legislative process.


Except... Republicans ave had control of the government since Politifact's been around.  Presidency no... but congress?

Outside which, the blog tends to go out of it's way to point out examples where they specifically do treat similar cases differently... which tends to be how politifact operates.   They tend to give one party the benefit of the doubt, while being hyper literal with the other party... in specific sentences when not looking at the whole context of the speach.

Like it points out... a lot of this generally happens because they have no real methodological method in their research process.  They give one side the benefit of doubt and look further in their context... because they're paying more attention to one side naturally.

I was talking about the study....covers Jan 2010 through Jan 2011, which would have been around 1 month of Republcian control of the House. I don't know how Republicans controlling the House counts as Republican control of the government, which is why I specifically mentioned unified control. As for the blog, I don't typically trust blogs unless I actually know the authors (typically academic blogs). Just a glance at their analyses leaves me skeptical though.....they aren't really any better and take the few politifact assessments I looked at out of context (selectively choosing to criticize certain aspects of the analyses and leave out other aspects that don't support their argument).

They aren't better...(I'd argue they are worse... but generally you don't have to be to be able to point out problems.

Just hold a different enough bias to do so.  Which... they tend to do pretty well.

http://www.politifactbias.com/2012/01/ranting-and-rating-why-politifacts.html

They do a pretty decent enough job pointing out a number of cases where they never bother to check the conext of a statement.   It takes just about as much time and is a hell of a lot more accurate to fact check yourself rather than rely on a partisian fact checking organization.

 

If you HAVE to use a fact checking site though... at least uses www.factcheck.org

Like CNN They were the origina., and possibly because of that... the least biased.  Polifact is a lot like 

 

Or even just 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker

Washington Post sure, but they tend to have a more balanced view and seem to cover things more equally.  (Full disclosure?  My favorite fact checking site)



Kasz216 on 18 May 2013

For example, and a bit more back on topic... they have a very good fact check on whether or not Obama called Benghazi a terrorist attack like CKLMB1 claims.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamas-claim-he-called-benghazi-an-act-of-terrorism/2013/05/13/7b65b83e-bc14-11e2-97d4-a479289a31f9_blog.html#pagebreak

The Pinocchio Test
During the campaign, the president could just get away with claiming he said “act of terror,” since he did use those words — though not in the way he often claimed. It seemed like a bit of after-the-fact spin, but those were his actual words — to the surprise of Mitt Romney in the debate.
But the president’s claim that he said “act of terrorism” is taking revisionist history too far, given that he repeatedly refused to commit to that phrase when asked directly by reporters in the weeks after the attack. He appears to have gone out of his way to avoid saying it was a terrorist attack, so he has little standing to make that claim now.
Indeed, the initial unedited talking points did not call it an act of terrorism. Instead of pretending the right words were uttered, it would be far better to acknowledge that he was echoing what the intelligence community believed at the time--and that the administration’s phrasing could have been clearer and more forthright from the start.

Four Pinocchios (Four Pinnocchios is the worst you can get FYI.)

 

and in general pretty indepth on the issue in general.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/the-benghazi-talking-points-whats-known-and-unknown/2013/05/06/f689ee08-b693-11e2-b94c-b684dda07add_blog.html#pagebreak



Kasz216 on 20 May 2013

Oh... and by the way... while two of these scandals do seem pretty bad....

I tend to agree with Connor Firedersdorf of the Atlantic.

 


http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/05/the-biggest-obama-scandals-are-proven-and-ignored/275960/



Around the Network
dsgrue3 on 20 May 2013
Ckmlb1 said:
dsgrue3 said:

I'm saying there a substantive difference between intelligence and talking points. Don't conflate the two. 

We have direct testiomy from Gregory Hicks confirming that the attack was indeed born of terrorism on that same day. It's highly ludicrous to suggest the CIA was unaware of this.

"No mention of the cable to Cairo, either?" Petraeus wrote after receiving Morell's edited version, developed after an intense back-and-forth among Obama administration officials. "Frankly, I'd just as soon not use this, then."

And disagreement from Patraeus himself.

But sure, go ahead and believe this was the CIA's fault, even though there is insurmountable evidence against that assertion.

I really don't care what you believe. I'm interested in the truth.


Once again, direct quote from CIA:  “[t]he currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US consulate and subsequently its annex.”

And deputy director of the CIA Morrell was the one that removed the references to previous warnings and the presence of extremists in what was then still considered a violent protest.  Can't pick and choose between your preferred members of the CIA. You should also notice that Petraeus concedes his point?

 I seem to not remember any heads at CIA or elsewhere rolling over 9/11 or the WMD fiasco, but now the president has to be impeached cause of faulty CIA intelligence? Bigger scandal than Watergate and Iran-Contra combined x10 apparently.

Gregory Hicks also said that fighter jets should do flyovers to scare away attackers, something that was impossible and pointless according to Republican defense secretary Gates.

I'm happy to blame the CIA if they are responsible, but if Hicks knew it was a terrorist attack - the CIA knew.

It simply isn't feasible to suggest the WH didn't have the same intel the CIA and Hicks had. 

You keep posting quotations from days after the attack of talking points. I've already explained the difference between talking points and intelligence. You seem hell-bent on conflating them, probably because it suits your agenda.

Like I said, I don't care who is to blame - Republicans, Democrats, Independents, CIA, NSA, WH, State Department, or all of them. I'm just interested in getting an answer as to why the talking points were so different from the actual intelligence and holding someone accountable.

It isn't like it's the first time in history in which the government in some capacity has lied to us, but it certainly does not mean we should tolerate it.



Kasz216 on 21 May 2013

So much for two rogue IRS agents.

Looks like the head of the Department is pleading the fifth.

No wonder Miller can't remember who she said was responsible.