The Matrix solved?

I'm pretty sure I've got a handle on the workings of the PolitiFact Matrix.

FaceBook, the home base of the PolitiFact Matrix, has added spam filters to organization/business pages.  By appearances, repetition of already-posted material may trigger the spam filter.  I have yet to see a post dumped from the general public view where it did not feature a quotation from an earlier post.  Or at least I don't remember any.

Does this get PolitiFact off the hook for the accusation of or the appearance of censorship?

Not entirely.  Most of what I've read suggests that spam posts do not appear at all.  Yet my posts appear to my FaceBook friends whether or not they appear via the general public view at PolitiFact's FaceBook page.

In addition, spam posts go to a spam folder of sorts for the FaceBook page administrator to consider for publication.  I have yet to confirm the existence of a Matrixed post that was later made visible by the administrator.

For now, I'll simply rewrite posts with decreased amounts of quoted material to the point where they appear (at least initially) to all.

And we'll see what happens.  Maybe I've already posted the last of the blue pill/red pill images.

It's either a fallacy or it isn't

The PolitiFact Matrix is on a roll this week.

The latest victim:

Why would PolitiFact allow the appearance that they censor the comments of conservatives?  Beats me, but there it is.

And, as usual, here's the comment for the sake of spiders and the like, reformatted into Blogese:

@ Bill Benson, who wrote:

You camouflaged your point well... took you several quotes, a few snarks, a hyperlink, and a second post to get there.

Some people would immediately see the reductio ad absurdum, where JoAnn is confronted with a conclusion she would probably prefer to avoid.

Go back and read your original post.

I count one quotation consisting of a single sentence with an accompanying link. I'm not sure how you came up with your numbers. Maybe you're counting the succeeding post as well, though that makes it hard to see why you mentioned the second post separately at the end. Nor do I see "several snarks."

is not equivalent something like 'who knows how long they waited before publishing?' Articulating the only logical inferences from a poorly-argued point doesn't constitute a fallacy (false choice or otherwise). Declaring a fallacy doesn't make it so.

Likewise, denying that it is a fallacy while claiming to have articulated "the only logical inferences from a poorly-argued point" doesn't make it so. But the latter does make an excellent description of the false choice fallacy where at least one other option exists. If you don't think that showing JoAnn a case where her logic leads to a conclusion that is improbable at best (Wisconsin Democrats participating in the PFW boycott ought to receive the type of suspicion she was prepared to apply to Rick Santorum qualifies as a logical inference from what I wrote then I'd be eager to hear your explanation.

But it probably makes more sense for you to just admit that you argued fallaciously.

Protect us from Hoover's protectionism

Another Matrixsy day over at PolitiFact's FaceBook page ...

Blue pill:

Red pill:

The full post, reformatted into Blogese:

@ Ed Hahn, who wrote:

Did he forget or never know that Hoover was a Republican?

Why does Hoover's party matter to Romney's point? Hoover signed into law a steep protectionistic tariff that made the GD worse worldwide. No Republican c...an ever do that again without a wave of opposition from his own party (see Bush and the steel tariff).

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3966

Matrixsy!

PF: We don't want no stinkin' explanation of why Bush II failed to repudiate supply-side economics

Here we go again, with PolitiFact's FaceBook page keeping a detailed answer on an important question from general view. 

This is what I wrote (reformatted closer to blog standards):

Christina Woodward expressed her apparent incredulity that some people don't see the G. W. Bush years as the final repudiation of supply-side economics. She wrote:

@Brandon and @Blake Obvious right!?

Supposedly it's obvious, for example, that if Bush's tax cuts had actually worked then we'd have full employment or something.

But these people completely forget, in their zeal to discredit supply-side economics, that history makes them look like they're talking out of both sides of their mouths. Who blew up the federal deficit? It was Bush, with his tax cuts (Keynesian cuts they forget to acknowledge), wars and expensive legislation like his wasteful drug benefit program.

Oh, wait. Isn't that government spending? Don't the Keynesians always remind us (when it's convenient) that all government spending is stimulative?

Sorry, folks. You just can't call the Bush administration the disproof of supply-side economics on one hand while giving him credit for exploding the deficit on the other. Your experiment has no control group. The experimental group is a grab-bag of economic approaches.

Get a clue.

This information is restricted in PolitiFact's Matrix.

Blue pill:

Red pill:

Censorship is fun!  And so good for you!

Brandon Fox follies, Vol. 4

Apparently PolitiFact is especially concerned about protecting Brandon Fox's psyche.  Posts disappeared by the PolitiFact Matrix are often associated with Fox, lately.

The latest case, blue pill version:

Red pill version:

And, as usual, a reformatted version of my complete response for the benefit of Google spiders and takers of red pills:

@ Brandon Fox, who wrote:

You are a funny guy Bryan. "Reform", huh? You mean privatize, right?

PolitiFact calls that "Pants on Fire" IIRC, but you can call it whatever you want so far as I'm concerned.

A move which would have wiped out a ton of wealth when the market collapsed.

Hopefully you haven't already lost your focus on the fact that Bush's 2001 speech shows that your claim of a planned entitlement crisis to broach the issue of entitlement reform is pretty silly.

The need for entitlement reform was built in by the nature of the pay-as-you-go (Ponzi financing) scheme. It isn't sustainable, and as the Galveston County experiment helps illustrate (imagine Fox News link here), we're capable of doing much better with a system that works based on a citizen's ownership of his retirement funds.

Just another way to funnel even more money to Wall Street.

We certainly wouldn't want to do *that* when it can be so profitably invested in government bonds (pardon the sarcasm). Again, check the experience in Galveston County. It's private investment managed by the local government. The county employees' returns are substantially better than they'd be getting from Social Security.

Just like Paul Ryan's budget is another way to funnel even more money to private insurance companies. The greed never stops with you guys does it?

I'm pretty sure that you did, in fact, miss the point that your conspiracy idea above was bunkum. I do, however, appreciate you undertaking the effort to prove that Republicans are not the only ones who engage in personal attacks in this forum.

Brandon Fox follies, Vol. 3

PolitiFact thinks I'm on some kind of roll with posting things Brandon Fox and others mustn't see.

Blue pill:

Red pill:

The conversation as it might have appeared at an uncensored discussion board:

Brandon Fox

Well the folks at the SEC were busy downloading porn while our financial system collapsed. http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/sec-pornography-employees-spent-hours-surfing-porn-sites/story?id=10452544 And some people want less regulations!?!... It would appear that less regulations are a big part of what caused this mess in the first place. Maybe we should let oil companies fill out their own safety inspection reports as well. Wait, they did that too?!? http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/25/eveningnews/main6518694.shtml Maybe when a few more oil rigs blow up we'll figure this stuff out. Less regulation my ass. They have had almost NO regulation and the lowest tax rates since the 50's. Corporate profits are at record levels. But maybe THIS TIME, if we just give them another ten percent tax cut, they may create a job or two. I mean, we can just take the money from programs like medicare, right? Stupid.

15 hours ago · · 3 people

Bryan White
The brilliant Brandon Fox is at it again, writing:

Well the folks at the SEC were busy downloading porn while our financial system collapsed. http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/sec-pornography-employees-spent-hours-surfing-porn-sites/story?id=1045...2544 And some people want less regulations!?!...

rofl

The SEC is the regulatory body. Apparently we need a regulatory body to regulate the SEC. And to keep that regulatory body from watching porn (or some other related flub), maybe we need a third regulatory body to regulate the former ... and so on.

But Brandon Fox is apparently immune to the fact that the attempt to regulate didn't work. It wasn't the lack of regulations. It was the ineptitude and indifference of the regulators.
9 hours ago · Like

Again, the good folks at PolitiFact apparently feel that Brandon Fox and others need to be shielded from my contribution.  And clearly the censorship is not the result of a policy forbidding coarse language or personal insults.  In this case the original post was apparently visible to all for a time (I checked for its presence via the organizational FaceBook account for which I administrate).  Hours later, it was invisible to the general public.

Brandon Fox follies, Vol. 2 (Updated)

Wonderful things happen when PolitiFact partitions its discussion area into a matrix-like set of personal realities.

Our latest example comes from a discussion thread associated with a PolitiFact story about an NRCC robocall.

Blue pill:

Red pill:

 

How many others have at least some of their posts hidden from the view of all except their FaceBook friends?  I have no idea, and if PolitiFact knows they're not telling.

The whole of the censored post:

And just to make it Googlable (with format altered to something more akin to blog standard):

@Brandon Fox, who wrote:

@Bryan White, how come it was OK for the republicans to increase the debt ceiling several times during the Bush administration with NO decreases in spending? Why does this blatant hypocrisy get a pass from witless shut-ins such as yourself?

Read, Brandon. I already explained it up above:

It's not hypocritical at all, Brandon. The situation is quite different today, in that the U.S. faces a review of its credit rating whether the debt ceiling is raised or not. If the debt ceiling is raised, the review will occur because the government is viewed as doing too little to curtail out-of-control spending.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2010/0316/Moody-s-hints-at-move-that-could-be-catastrophic-for-US-debt

There was no threat of a review of the U.S. credit rating under Bush if spending wasn't reigned in. There is a threat of that today. Big difference in the situation, no hypocrisy. After you get the reading part down, try the thinking part.

Update:


Almost forgot the most amusing part, where Brandon Fox assumed from the apparent lack of response that I am some sort of coward:

All of that blather, and yet Bryan White is still too much of a coward and answer why the republicans raised the debt ceiling several times during the Bush administration without slobbering at the mouth about corresponding spending cuts. That one too hard for ya Bryan? Since you obviously don't have a job and can troll the internet all day long looking for articles maybe you can find time to answer that instead of employing your usual misdirection and distraction to get people off topic.

If cowardice has anything to do with it, I am not the source of it.