Spending During the Obama Administration

I came across this The Fact Checker post today at the Washington Post website (okay, to be completely accurate, I came across the post first through this Politifact post addressing the same article, which then directed me to a list of Twitter posts about the Politifact rating on the subject matter, where at least one of the Tweets (oh I do hate talking about Twitter and Tweets) led me to the Washington Post article linked earlier) and I was intrigued enough that I decided to read all the way through the article.  I generally do not go to The Fact Checker, but I do go to Politifact on occasion.  I have posted before that I think that Politifact is a Clown Act, and my position in this regard has not changed.  But this has given me the opportunity to see whether I think the Washington Post's version of fact checking also qualifies as circus performance.  Let's get to it!

First of all, I think that it is important to note the title of the article: "The facts about the growth of spending under Obama."  The article then goes on to quote a statement made by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on May 23rd:

I simply make the point, as an editor might say, to check it out; do not buy into the BS that you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this administration. I think doing so is a sign of sloth and laziness.

The Fact Checker then goes to work analyzing the numbers provided, but leads with the following right after providing the Carney quote:

The spokesman’s words caught our attention because here at The Fact Checker we try to root out “BS” wherever it occurs.

 Carney made his comments while berating reporters for not realizing that “the rate of spending — federal spending — increase is lower under President Obama than all of his predecessors since Dwight Eisenhower, including all of his Republican predecessors.” He cited as his source an article by Rex Nutting, of MarketWatch, titled, “Obama spending binge never happened,” which has been the subject of lots of buzz in the liberal blogosphere.

 But we are talking about the federal budget here. That means lots of numbers — numbers that are easily manipulated. Let’s take a look.

When I read Carney's first quote implying sloth and laziness on the part of reporters and then the second quote discussing the rate of increase of federal spending on the part of the Obama administration relative to previous administrations, I see two points that are being made that should be addressed.  First, are the reporters lazy and slothful, and second, is the rate of increase in spending during the Obama administration lower than that of all of Obama's predecessors since the Eisenhower administration?

I'm going to look at the second question/issue first because this is the only one that The Fact Checker bothered to address.  I'm going to present the numbers that first appeared in Rex Nutting's MarketWatch article.  Nutting starts counting spending during the Obama administration with Fiscal Year 2010 (beginning October 1, 2009) with the reasoning being that the budget for Fiscal Year 2009 (beginning October 1, 2008) was approved while George W. Bush was still president.  Nutting does make some adjustments whereby he attributes some of the 2009 spending to Obama, but the important point is that according to Nutting's method, Obama's major responsibility for the budget begins with Fiscal Year 2010.  With this as the starting point, we have the following spending numbers for the last few years: 2009 (Bush) - $3.52 trillion, 2010 (Obama) - $3.46 trillion, 2011 - $3.6 trillion, 2012 (from Congressional Budget Office's baseline projections of laws currently in effect) - $3.63 trillion, and 2013 (from Congressional Budget Office's baseline projections of laws currently in effect) - $3.58 trillion.  When you apply the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) formula to these numbers*, you get an annualized average growth rate of ((3.58/3.52)^(1/4)-1) 0.423%.  (Nutting just rounded it to 0.4%, but I like writing more numbers because they make my posts longer.)

The Fact Checker takes issue, however, with the method that Nutting used in placing Fiscal Year 2009 in Bush's column.  Instead, The Fact Checker decides it's more appropriate place that fiscal year under Obama's watch and instead (after some adjustments to the numbers in 2009) shows the years as follows: 2008 (Bush) - $2.98 trillion, 2009 (Obama) - $3.27 trillion, 2010 - $3.46 trillion, 2011 - $3.6 trillion, $3.65 trillion, and 2013 - $3.72 trillion.  There are a couple of notes to these data.  First of all, The Fact Checker uses Obama's actual proposed budget, as scored by the Congressional Budget Office, in projecting spending for both 2012 and 2013.  This is in contrast to what Nutting does in using the Congressional Budget Office's baseline score.  The Fact Checker is free of course to use this method, and in the end it may turn out to be the more accurate method (we shall not know until the final spending values are registered), but it is no more "correct," as they assert, than using the CBO baseline numbers.  And I can easily argue that The Fact Checker's use of Obama's budget number is less likely to be accurate in the end.  (I'll address this later.)  But let's just calculate The Fact Checker's annual growth rate from 2009-2012 - ((3.65/2.98)^(1/4)-1) 5.201%.  The Fact Checker then calculates the growth rate using their (or its) assumptions from 2010-2013, contrasting with Nutting's findings - ((3.72/3.27)^(1/4)-1) 3.276%.  The Fact Checker then states that Nutting calculated the annualized growth from 2010-2013 at 1.4%.  (Here they have gone to page two of Nutting's article, subtracted the $140 billion figure that Nutting mentions from the 2009 spending to get to $3.38 trillion, and then performed the same compound annual growth rate formula.  I get 1.448% when I apply the formula.)

But now we start to come to the really fun part about The Fact Checker's post!  "Of course it takes two to tangle - a president and a Congress(,)" The Fact Checker says.  Ha!  Pun humor!  The Fact Checker then goes on to say, "Obama's numbers get even higher if you look at what he proposed to spend(.)"  So of course they show actual spending figures from years 2010-2012 versus what the Obama administration requested.  (2010 - $3.46 trillion enacted versus $3.67 trillion requested, 2011 - $3.60 trillion enacted versus $3.80 trillion requested, and 2012 - $3.65 trillion enacted versus $3.71 trillion requested.)  And then The Fact Checker follows up with this paragraph:

So in every case, the president wanted to spend more money than he ended up getting. Nutting suggests that federal spending flattened under Obama, but another way to look at it is that it flattened at a much higher, post-emergency level — thanks in part to the efforts of lawmakers, not Obama.

So in effect, The Fact Checker chooses to give all the credit to lawmakers for the decreased rate of spending increases and not the Obama administration.  The logic behind this conclusion, of course, is necessarily that had Obama received all of the funds that he requested in exactly the areas in which he and the administration envisioned using them, then the administration definitely would have spent it all.  So The Fact Checker is using in building their case against Obama in part not what the administration actually did spend, but what he requested, since it was a higher value.  The natural thing to wonder is, if the Obama administration had requested a lower amount of money than what was actually enacted, would The Fact Checker choose to bring this up or consider it irrelevant since it was not actually what was spent?

Okay, so then we get to a paragraph where The Fact Checker says that the growth in federal spending would fall somewhere between the average annual growths during Clinton's (lower) and Bush's (43) terms in office, which is true according The Fact Checker's method of calculation.  But also in this paragraph, The Fact Checker says a number of things that are truly bewildering, for which it provides no link for the information.  Here is the passage in the paragraph:

At 5.2 percent growth, Obama’s increase in spending would be nearly three times the rate of inflation. Meanwhile, Nutting pegs Ronald Reagan with 8.7 percent growth in his first term — we get 12.5 percent CAGR — but inflation then was running at 6.5 percent.

So the claim is that the growth of spending under Obama is nearly three times the rate of inflation...  Well, when I go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics site and look for the consumer price index (CPI), there appear a number of different options to use to calculate the current inflation rate.  If I choose to use the change from April 2011 - April 2012 (224.906 - 230.085), I calculate an inflation rate of 2.303%.  If I choose to use the change from December 2010 - December 2011 (219.179 - 225.672), I calculate an inflation rate of 2.962%.  If I choose to use the change from October 2010 - October 2011 (to mirror the fiscal year) (218.711 - 226.421), I calculate an inflation rate of 3.525%.  Finally, if I choose to use the change to date this year an extrapolate that rate to the full year I would get ((230.085/225.672)^(1/4))^12-1) 5.982%.  Okay, so I have values of 2.303%, 2.962%, 3.525%, and 5.982% and as best as I can tell (you know, trying to work the complicated math), 5.2% is not close to three times the value of any of them.  There is the chance that The Fact Checker used different values to calculate the inflation to use as the basis for that claim, and it would have been helpful if it indicated where it received this information.

From there, The Fact Checker points out a discrepancy in what Nutting claims to be the growth rate in spending during Reagan's first term and what The Fact Checker calculates it to be itself.  Nutting claims 8.7% for the CAGR while The Fact Checker calculates 12.5%.  If one examines historical data provided in Table 1.1 on the White House Office of Management and Budget website, one can see that for Fiscal Year 1981, federal spending was $678,241 million while in Fiscal Year 1985, federal spending was $946,344 million.  So if you use these numbers to calculate the CAGR you get ((946,344/678,241)^(1/4)-1) 8.684%, a number surprisingly close to Nutting's value and not at all close to The Fact Checker's.  If, however, we choose to calculate the value the way The Fact Checker did earlier, we would use the years 1980 and 1984 to calculate the change for Reagan's first term and we would get ((851,805/590,941)^(1/4)-1) 9.572%.  And of course, this is also not really that close to The Fact Checker's value of 12.5%.  Of course, if The Fact Checker provided the numbers and source that used to calculate this number we could see the method used to arrive at the number, but I cannot imagine that The Fact Checker could actually find numbers that differed from the historical values used by the Office of Management and Budget.

And finally, in that paragraph (I am spending a long time on that one paragraph, I tell you), The Fact Checker states that inflation was at 6.5% during Reagan's first term.  Hmmm...  When I look at the December to December changes from December 1980 (just before Reagan took office) to December 1984 (just before Reagan's first term concluded), I calculate inflation values of 8.922% for 1981, 3.830% for 1982, 3.791% for 1983, and 3.949% for 1984.  And when you calculate the CAGR, you get 5.100% for the time making the majority of this first term.  (All of these values are calculated using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.) This is certainly a high value, but it is certainly not 6.5%, nor is it close to that value.  In fact, for the vast majority of that first term, the value was significantly lower than what The Fact Checker claims.  Again, if The Fact Checker can provide the source and equations used in calculating this value, it would be very helpful.

After this, The Fact Checker shows the spending under Obama as a percentage of GDP.  These numbers appear accurate, and it is true that since Obama has been in office, spending as a percentage of GDP has been higher than it has been at points since World War II.  But I do notice that though The Fact Checker had no problem using the numbers Obama had requested to challenge the notion that he has not radically raised spending, they do not show the GDP projections that the administration claimed would have resulted had they actually received everything requested.

And at last we get to The Fact Checker's Pinocchio Test (Oh Goodie!)...

Carney suggested the media were guilty of “sloth and laziness,” but he might do better next time than cite an article he plucked off the Web, no matter how much it might advance his political interests. The data in the article are flawed, and the analysis lacks context — context that could easily could be found in the budget documents released by the White House.

The White House might have a case that some of the rhetoric concerning Obama’s spending patterns has been overblown, but the spokesman should do a better job of checking his facts before accusing reporters of failing to do so. The picture is not as rosy as he portrayed it when accurate numbers, taken in context, are used.

And three Pinocchios are awarded in the end.  And that is apparently a lot of Pinocchios.  I won't go so far as to say that this analysis is lazy, because it does look like The Fact Checker wrote a lot of words, but it is certainly sloppy and borders on shoddy.  It presents questionable numbers, as I highlighted earlier, without providing sources for those numbers, and I strongly contend that it's analysis is terribly flawed when it comes to estimating what the spending level will be at the end of Fiscal Year 2012 and Fiscal Year 2013.  The Fact Checker criticizes Nutting for using the CBO baseline numbers when estimating Fiscal Year 2012 and Fiscal Year 2013 spending and criticizes Carney and the White House for not keeping the spending within context.  However, a very important context that The Fact Checker seems to ignore completely is that the likelihood of President Obama getting the money from Congress that he requested is virtually zero.  If I had the chance to ask The Fact Checker a question I would ask it - what that has transpired over the last year and a half or so leads you to believe that the president will get from this Congress the budget that he requests?  And why is it not more likely that the automatic budget cuts that are in the CBO baseline will kick in?  (Okay, that's two questions.)  (And here's a third.)  When is the next time that "Supercommittee" is going to meet to come to a compromise on debt reduction?  You, The Fact Checker, have provided absolutely no compelling reason for why Obama's requested budget should be used to project what actual spending will be.  As you have even pointed out, Obama has always been given less than requested.

To sum up, it seems pretty clear that if you use The Fact Checker's method for calculating spending increases and if you look at the spending increases relative to GDP and account for inflation, the Obama administration's increases in spending are not the slowest since the Eisenhower administrations.  However, this does not mean that the reporters are not lazy and slothful when it comes to covering this.  The numbers show that the rate of spending increases during the Obama administration are on average lower than those in the Bush (43) administration, even in his first term before the financial crisis.  The data suggest that if Bush (43) had remained in office, spending would have increased further than under Obama.  But this is not why the media are lazy and slothful.  They are lazy and slothful because very few of them have apparently bothered to investigate this notion that the Obama administration has increased spending radically.  They just seemed to take it at face value, and this sloppy and borderline shoddy The Fact Checker piece appears to be an attempt to provide cover for the reporters.

So, while the methodology used by Nutting, which Carney seemed to accept can certainly be debated, it is absolutely absurd for The Fact Checker to claim that its methodology is correct and not subject to debate.  And it would also be nice if The Fact Checker actually, you know, checked it's numbers and values and provided some more sources, lest it be accused of "sloth and laziness."

Erin Burnett Did Not Appear to Understand the Conversation

I am rarely able to stomach watching Erin Burnett OutFront, but for whatever reason, I decided to sit through yesterday evening's (May 8, 2012) episode of the show.  And once again I was reminded of why it is such a challenge for me sit for that hour watching CNN - Erin Burnett is terrible at hosting this show.

During one segment of the episode in question, Burnett and her panel were discussing the Indiana Republican U.S. Senate primary that was taking place that day.  Early on in the segment, Burnett discussed the fact that longtime Republican Senator Richard Lugar appeared on the verge of losing in the primary to a Tea Party backed opponent.  (A rough transcript of the entire episode appears here.)  After showing a campaign advertisement that was run against Lugar during the campaign, Burnett made some comments alluding to the disappearance of moderates and the dwindling incidence of compromise in Washington, D.C. politics before introducing her panel of guests.

Her guests were John Avlon, listed as a CNN contributor and a chief speechwriter for former NYC mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Hogan Gidley, listed as a former director of communications for former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, and James Carville, listed as a CNN political contributor and a political strategist/advisor for many Democratic campaigns, including Bill Clinton's successful 1992 campaign.

Now, her discussion with her guests started with a conversation about the divided nature of Washington, moved on to a few points about the strength of the Tea Party, considering that the movement had appeared to have been successful in defeating a longtime incumbent Senator, before finally moving on to a discussion of the likely general election match-up between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and in particular, a column that Carville had recently written discussing the race.

From here I'll go to the rough CNN transcript, and I have added the emphasis:

BURNETT: You wrote an op-ed today though talking about something that I think we have all been hearing. A lot of people have been saying sort of and you know (INAUDIBLE) oh Barack Obama has this.

CARVILLE: Yes.

BURNETT: He is going to win this. And you said let me just make it clear this is you and not me. "What are you smoking? What are you drinking? What are you snorting or just what in the hell are you thinking?"

CARVILLE: Right. Who could look at the world and not just the United States. United States in 2008, United States in 2010, everywhere in the world look what happened in Britain, Cameron lost an election. In Germany Merkel was losing. Look what happened in France. Look what happened in Greece. Look what happened everywhere in the world.

What incumbent would be confident in this environment? Except for some reason the U.S. Democrats have -- and I think it -- you know it has to do with like how bad the Republicans are, but you know in the end that's not -- we got to get -- we got to tighten up here. This thing is not -- is nowhere near in the bag. It's a really tough election and they're raising (INAUDIBLE) lobbyists, but not tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars in this election and we're just not anywhere near aggressive enough.

BURNETT: Hogan, what do you make of this though? I mean considering that obviously Rick Santorum was more conservative than Mitt Romney, so when it came to who was getting the nomination for the Republican Party it was not the most conservative person, which is a little bit different than what we're seeing tonight in Indiana.

GIDLEY: Right, well I mean every race is different. And you know it didn't have any name ID. He was virtually unknown. He had no money compared to Mitt Romney, so those are a lot of factors that led up to the suspension of the campaign. There's no doubt about that.

I mean Mitt Romney just did this a few years ago, but you know I think on a larger scale and James alluded to some of this earlier, but you know I mean this is going to be a dog fight. There is going to be a ton of money spent in this race, something like we have never seen and don't forget even in this cycle, I mean you're talking about, even in 2010 it wasn't this bad with Twitter and Facebook and things, the emergence of the social media that is -- it is just every second something is going on with these candidates.

And every word is parse like it never has been before and this is going to be one of the most interesting and historical races of our lifetime not just because of the two sides, but just because of everything that is going to be going on under the surface that we all care about that it's going to be interesting to see what we care about every day. And what the average person cares about who is watching this at arm's length and won't get involved until after the summer. 

CARVILLE: I wonder how many tens of millions of dollars in negative ads Mitt Romney and his Super PAC dumped on Rick Santorum. I mean they never let -- they never had a discussion about ideology. They just went in and every time that they went they just croaked with negative ads. And Santorum looked at Pennsylvania and said this guy is going to dump another five or six million. I mean this is a man to go negative in a second. And again he has the whole pollution lobby sitting there ready to fund him and Democrats are sitting there being confident.

(CROSSTALK)

CARVILLE: It makes utterly no sense to me.

BURNETT: Well you got George Soros throwing millions of dollars in now. You are going to get negativity from both sides.

Now I direct you to the last two to three statements (ignoring the crosstalk) that I have bolded and italicized.  This shows just how awful Burnett is.  She appears at the end to have completely forgotten what the subject of the conversation was.  Carville points out his belief that the Romney campaign and his supporters are likely to pump millions of dollars into the effort to defeat President Obama, and Burnett's response was, "Well you got George Soros throwing millions of dollars in now.  You are going to get negativity from both sides."

I'm not going to try to debate whether Burnett's statement is true, because it is almost assuredly true.  The problem with the statement is not whether it is true, but that it is not in any way relevant in the context of the conversation.  It is a complete non sequiter.  Carville was saying that his op-ed was about the cockiness that he perceived to be coming from Democrats, their belief that President Obama is a shoe-in for victory in November.  But his points in this discussion of the op-ed were that basically there are no guarantees in politics (he alludes to other recent political races around the world) and that Governor Romney and his supporters won't hesitate to spend millions of dollars on negative ad campaigns (he gives examples of what happened with the Romney primary races against Santorum) during the general election.  Importantly, the point that Carville was making was that Democrats needed to wake up and realize that this race is not over and Obama is not just going to be handed the victory.  But then Burnett responds, "Well, you got George Soros throwing millions of dollars in now.  You are going to get negativity from both sides."

Vacuous statements like this force me to question whether Burnett is qualified to host a serious news program and reinforces my general decision not to waste an hour daily watching this nonsense.

Alabama/Mississippi Primary Night

I'm not sure why I continue to watch these stupid primary return shows, but I find myself once again watching as the results come in the ridiculously stupid way that CNN can only do.  Not only does CNN overreact to just about any small change in the counted number of votes (especially when a very small percentage of the votes have even been counted), but the excessive degree to which they have to point out that, hey, look at us at CNN!  We have exclusive results because we actually have people at the actual counting locations who can tell you the results as soon as the votes are actually counted, before any other organization can do it!  However, for reasons unknown, we are not actually going to update our totals!  So basically, unless you care enough to write down the numbers that John King keeps writing on the screen, keep track of the numbers prior to this "breaking news" reporting, and decide that it is worthwhile to make these relatively insignificant changes (because they keep doing it), this is a total waste of time.

But a new wrinkle in CNN's ridiculous coverage tonight is how they have harped on the fact that prisoners are actually helping to carry in vote returns in Birmingham, AL (I believe) as reported by Dana Bash.  Now apparently these prisoners had been sentenced to hard time for whatever reason, but the key that I took away from the first time CNN talked about this was that apparently this practice had been used before in Alabama since a prison is evidently close to this particular counting location.  Maybe CNN realizes that their coverage is terrible and that's why they keep bringing this completely irrelevant point to the attention of the audience.

You may ask then, why I am bothering to watch CNN's coverage if I think it is so awful.  Well, that would be a good question.  And a lot of this is my fault for being lazy.  My cable box stopped working a few years back with the digital transition, but I have been too lazy to get the new box installed.  This is not necessarily a bad thing as I'm sure I would have been watching a lot of useless programming over those years, but I am stuck watching CNN rather MSNBC as I would prefer.  I suppose I could watch the returns on C-SPAN, but that is being presented by Politico, and I actually believe that Politico is actually far worse than CNN.

Well, Santorum has won Alabama, maybe I'll post again after Mississippi is called, but probably not.

Michigan/Arizona Primary Night I

So, since I'm watching the returns for the Republican primaries in Michigan and Arizona come in tonight, I decided that it would be a fine idea to make a few posts.  And by 'a few posts', I probably mean just this one, but time will tell.  You may ask why I don't do this on Twitter, well, the answer is simple; I don't have a stupid Twitter account.  And I hope I never have a stupid Twitter account.

Well, to get on with it, what inspired this post happened a little while ago when Wolf Blitzer (yes, I'm watching this on CNN) was talking shortly after they returned from a break.  It was quite comical to see Blitzer appear to nearly have a heart attack as he announced that the numbers just changed and something along the lines of "Rick Santorum was just up on Mitt Romney by only 400-something votes, but just like that he's now up by 500-something votes!  Oh my gosh!  Things are crazy!"

Okay, I did kind of make up those last two sentences, but Blitzer's shock, whether it was genuine or manufactured, was absurd because most of the polls in Michigan had been closed for about forty minutes and only about six percent of the votes had been tabulated.  So it should not have been that shocking for a change in the vote tally to occur.  Besides, Blitzer has probably seen similar sorts of fantastic phenomena occur before as he is old and has done these political shows before.  He is very old.

Alright, I have to get back to watching, I think Wolf is getting excited again!

The Clown Act that is Politifact

I don’t know why I still on occasion go over and look at Politifact.com, but it’s probably for the comedy value.  An example of this is the fact that today they actually have a story about a claim made in the television program ‘Glee’.  Seriously.

But I’m writing this to discuss the absurdity of some of their rating decisions (and probably their overall rating methodology).  A few weeks ago, after President Obama delivered the State of the Union address, Politifact initially ruled a claim that Obama made – “In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than 3 million jobs.  Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005.” – as Half True.  In their original article about this item they explain their ruling thusly, “Obama is correct on both counts when using private-sector job numbers. But he went too far when he implicitly credited his administration policies. So we rate the statement Half True.”  To sum up what Politifact is saying, what President Obama said was 100% true, supported by facts, but we (Politifact) judge the statement only half true because though the statement is supported by facts, we (Politifact) think that since Obama is taking credit for these facts, the statement is only Half True.  It should be noted that Politifact did later upgrade their ruling to Mostly True and they provided an explanation for the change here.  Wonderful.

Now let’s fast-forward to an item that appeared on Politifact.com earlier this week.  They rate a claim that Senator Marco Rubio of Florida made – “The majority of Americans are conservatives.” – as Mostly True.  What is truly absurd about their analysis of this statement can be seen in the first two paragraphs that they have written:

Liberals may want to argue with Sen. Marco Rubio’s remarksat the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

But they don’t have the evidence to argue with this statement: "The majority of Americans are conservatives."

This is absurd because Politifact is essentially asserting that the burden of proof is on liberals to prove Marco Rubio incorrect, rather than with it being in its proper place, with Rubio showing evidence to support his own claim.  This is truly shoddy analysis, but let’s move on.

To support their ruling of Mostly True, Politifact cites a Gallup poll from 2011 that says that 40% of Americans identify themselves as conservatives, 35% identify as moderates, and 21% identify themselves as liberals.  For the sake of this post, I’m going to leave alone whether just claiming you are conservative, moderate, or liberal automatically means that you really are conservative, moderate, or liberal, and I’m also going to leave alone the topic of defining what it actually means to be a conservative, a moderate, or a liberal.  Instead, I’ll do as Politifact has done and use ideological identification as a proxy for actual ideology.

And in doing this, let’s revisit what Politifact actually quotes Rubio as saying.

“The majority of Americans are conservatives.”

This statement is demonstrably false.  There is zero evidence that Politifact lists in the article to support this statement, even using the proxy that I discussed above.  Zero.  I have never seen a scenario in which forty percent is the majority of anything (you see, because the remaining 60% would be larger than the 40%).  At the end of the article, Politifact says the following in rating the claim:

Rubio said that the majority of Americans are conservative.  A respected ongoing poll from Gallup shows that conservatives are the largest ideological group, but they don’t cross the 50 percent threshold. So we rate his statement Mostly True.

So let’s recap the Rubio case.  Marco Rubio said something that is demonstrably false when you look at the evidence that Politifact has provided, yet Politifact elevates the claim in their ruling system to Mostly True.  President Obama makes a claim that is 100% factually accurate, but it starts as Half True, before it’s later upgraded to Mostly True.

There’s a passage in the post about Senator Rubio in which Politifact says:

First, he said a majority of Americans are conservatives. In Gallup’s poll, the number has never crossed the 50 percent threshold.  Technically, he would be more accurate if he said a plurality of Americans are conservative.

No, technically he would be more accurate if he said that a plurality of Americans identify as conservative.  However, what Rubio said is not accurate at all, and only in Politifact’s crazy rating system could it garner a Mostly True.

Lastly, I would like to apologize for my description in the title of this post, The Clown Act that is Politifact.  I have don’t have any evidence that any people that write for Politifact have worked as circus clowns, rodeo clowns, or appeared as clowns at children’s birthday parties.

Sorry Rush

By now the good news (as far as I'm concerned) should be widely known that the bid by a group including Rush Limbaugh to buy the St. Louis Rams has fallen apart. Or to be more clear, the bid has fallen apart as long as Limbaugh is a part of the group. Now there has been much commentary about this story, as late last week there was push back from a number of NFL players who said flat out that they would refuse to ever play on a team owned by Rush Limbaugh. Even the owner of the Indianapolis Colts, Jim Irsay, said that he would never vote for a group owned in part by Limbaugh to own a team.

I have watched some of the commentary on this story, including this video from ESPN. First of all, the initial part of what Scoop Jackson is saying is unbelievably naive. Because Rush Limbaugh has enough money to buy a part of the Rams, he should be able to buy a part of the Rams. That's the strength of the argument. Well sure, this would be a wonderful point of view if Rush Limbaugh was buying a car or a cheeseburger or a video game system (and it appears to owning a team on a Madden video game may be the closest Limbaugh may ever get to actually owning an NFL franchise), but the fact that (a) the other owners of NFL teams have to vote you in as acceptable for ownership and (b) the team depends on the performance of its players to actually generate revenue makes the whole "I have enough money so I can buy whatever I want" argument completely ridiculous.

Rush Limbaugh has dug his own grave in this instance. Whether you believe him to be a racist or not, enough of the players in the NFL (which is apparently 61% African American), as well as the head of the National Football League Players Association union, happen to think old Rush is divisive enough and has been insensitive enough that should he own the Rams, they would not play for the team and/or encourage players not to play for the team. Now of course I've read numerous comments from conservatives on message boards claiming that Limbaugh is being unfairly treated because he is conservative. I know that there is very little I can say to them to dissuade them from this delusion, but I'll give it a go anyway. Rush Limbaugh won't be able to own a team not because he is being treated unfairly, but because he cannot stop himself from saying absolutely stupid crap.

White House Calls FNC what it is - Morning Joe Crew Reacts

Okay, so this is yet another post about Morning Joe. Surprise, surprise. Well, I talk about Morning Joe because it is really the one of the few conservative leaning programs that I'll watch. I do occasionally watch Fox News Sunday, as I've said in an earlier post, but I refuse to watch just about anything that comes on the Fox News Channel (FNC). And the reason for this is because the FNC is a Republican Party propaganda network. Even more importantly, the White House is now willing to even to call Fox out on its GOP propaganda agenda.

I absolutely love it. It's terrific. But of course the clowns on Morning Joe this morning were still harping on the fact that President Obama should go on Fox, that Chris Wallace (host of Fox News Sunday) is a straight newsman, that even if they feel that it is true that FNC is a GOP propaganda arm (which it is), they shouldn't say so, and that the president and White House do themselves no favor, or even hurt themselves by doing this.

First of all, I would be careful listening to any advice or conventional wisdom espoused by such people as Mika Brzezinski (not very smart), Pat Buchanan (not very smart and a pretty well confirmed bigot), and Harold Ford, Jr (not very smart and Blue Dog-ish meaning he's basically Republican-lite). Additionally, do I need to point out how not-very-smart, bordering on stupid, these people sound? On what planet do these people live where they believe any supporters of President Obama are loyal FNC viewers? Do these morons really think that the Obama administration should worry about its declining approval ratings among the FNC viewing audience?

Bending over backwards to placate the crybabies at Fox will almost certainly win the president no points with their viewers, but among many of his supporters, it is probably refreshing to see him stand up firmly against this clownish, fake news outlet. I know I'm enjoying it. But of course, the regulars on the Morning Joe program are not the most brilliant of minds that appear on MSNBC.