Denied again in the same thread as last post

Gary,

What source am I supposed to go to, Gary? The "Stop government subsidies to oil companies" page at Facebook? Yahoo! Answers? The Huffington Post?

What we find is a list of sources that generally fail to describe what those subsidies... consist of. And that's the point.

This source was on the first page of hits. Maybe you should read it.

http://lewwaters.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/oil-companies-tax-cheats-or-boogieman/

I'm deleting it to try again with a shortened URL.

The new version worked.  That's a big clue toward solving the PolitiFact Matrix.

Mention of Clinton cut to capital gains rate--Denied!

The latest casualty of Facebook censorship at PolitiFact's page:

@ Brian Conway

You want them to pay the same percentage as you on their income or on their capital gains? Because they would like to pay the same income tax as you do (lower rate!).

If you made taxation the same on all income including capital gains, then you're making investment a much riskier proposition, resulting in fewer private jobs created. Is that seriously what you want?

Remember the good ol' days with President Clinton? That guy was so good for the economy (cut the federal tax on capital gains)!

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/apr/29/capital-gains-taxes-demystified/

Hard to see why a spam filter would catch that one, isn't it?

What if people learned that the U.S. prints its own money? (Updated)

Disaster!  Somebody at Facebook or PolitiFact should do something to make sure that doesn't happen.

In other words, I've got another example of a post that failed to get past the censors at PolitiFact's Facebook page.  But first, the genius of Jeff Hussain, whose misinformation is apparently exactly the sort of thing PolitiFact wants published in its discussion area:

Jeff Hussain I am all for decriminalizing drug and eliminating the DEA. Not only would we save billions annually we would generate billions in revenue. As far as the deficit is concerned... until our gov't creates its own currency, instead of borrowing money at interest, our debt and deficit problems will never go away.

If I remember correctly, Jeff D. of Bewz Newz 'n' Vewz and PolitiFact Bias pointed out essentially the same statement from Hussain in a different spot a few weeks ago.  Of course it's absurd because the U.S. government does, in fact, print money as part of its efforts to manage the economy.  But clearing up Hussain's misinformation, at least for a supposedly non-real person, or an alien-head avatar or something, just isn't that easy these days.  The censors wouldn't let this one pass:

Bryan White

Jeff H. wrote in part

"... until our gov't creates its own currency..."

As there's no suggestion of sarcasm, it seems safe to say that Hussain possesses a substantial degree of ignorance about economics.

http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed01.html

http://www.moneyfactory.gov/aboutthebep.html

That one wouldn't publish.  What could I publish, I wondered?  The next post did appear in the public view:

Bryan White
What a surprise. Another ReThuglican who can't tell the truth (just experimenting to see what kind of content I'm allowed to post).

It's sure good to know that "ReThuglican" won't get me censored. I'll have to remember that one.


***

I've yet to absolutely confirm any instance in which I had a post fail to appear initially and then appear in the general public view right away.  This suggests some sort of automatic filtering process rather than censorship by an individual judging on a case-by-case basis.  The criteria remain mysterious.


Update:

I've bypassed the censors.  I wonder how long it will be until jackbooted thugs show up at my door?



Same URLs, just shortened with a popular Twitter-associated Web tool.

Hiding the truth about Obama's Strategic Oil Reserve promise

Note:  Censorship of my remarks at PolitiFact's Facebook page has turned so ubiquitous that I am dispensing with screen captures except where it seems necessary to establish context.

Here's the latest bit of apparently partisan censorship, though a number have occurred over the past two days:

David Stockdale made a decent point (response reformatted to improve the blog presentation):

People cannot seem to get it through their heads that this is essentially an effort to stimulate the economy.

Mr. Stockdale put his finger on the missing piece in PolitiFact's fact check. In the original context, President Obama said he and VP Biden advocated the necessity of using the SPR because a condition of economic emergency exists.

If Obama receives credit for fulfilling that promise, it should be recognized that Obama is declaring a state of economic emergency--in the midst of "Recovery Summer" Pt. 2.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe we have an economic emergency that requires a limited, responsible swap of light oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) for heavy crude oil to help bring down prices at the pump.
http://fliiby.com/file/440161/eby8met0iv.html

The Jeff Hussain Follies

Okay, maybe I haven't got the Matrix nailed down as to its sinister workings.

In a very recent reply to misinformer Jeff Hussain at PolitiFact's FaceBook page, I limited myself to one short quotation of existing material and followed that up with three substantial paragraphs with three associated hotlinks.

No go, so far as publishing it to the general audience.

I tried republishing it minus the quotation of Jeff Hussain.  No go.

I tried republishing just the first paragraph minus the second two.  No go.

Of course, it may be that the spam filter counts my own semi-privately published posts against me in terms of reproducing existing material--that is, I'm a spammer for repeating myself even if nobody at all sees it but me.

Blue pill:

Red pill:

If that first post was caught in a spam filter then the spam filter is too sensitive by half.

The invisible dialog between Jeff and me might have helped inform readers at PolitiFact's FaceBook page.  I'll have to settle for reproducing it here so that it's visible to the Web.

Jeff's part first (bold emphasis added to contrast it to the following reply):

(I) just want everyone know that social security has billions of dollars sitting there but the amount decreases annually. why? for the past 10 years the govt has been running at a deficit so to cover the deficit they have been taking money from social security. why is the govt running at a deficit? when clinton left office the govt had a surplus but after the bush tax cuts and 3 trillion dollars spent on 2 wars you dont have to be a mathematician to figure this out. they are giving tax cuts to the rich and using social security to pay for it.

And my unfit-for-general-audiences reply:

Whether or not Jeff is personally confused, his statement is confused. The billions in the Social Security Trust Fund is spent money that the government has promised to pay back with interest. It does not change the fact that Social Security pays benefits with present-day contributions, it just means that there was a surplus left over after paying benefits. As for surplus from the Clinton era (with a Republican Congress, don't forget), that really has nothing to do with it at all. Social Security is off budget in the current era.
http://www.ssa.gov/history/BudgetTreatment.html

The so-called "Clinton surplus" was a budget surplus, meaning that the nation still ran a huge debt, but the debt came down a bit for a short time before proceeding to climb again. A climb would have occurred regardless of Bush's tax policies simply because of the economic slowdown that started during Clinton's last year.
http://factcheck.org/2008/02/the-budget-and-deficit-under-clinton/

The FactCheck.org graph shows 2001 as part of Clinton's last budget (FY 2001). Bush was actually in office for the bulk of that fiscal year, and the effects of the economic slowdown are partly apparent in the way the budget surplus dropped in that year. Reduced economic activity produces lower federal revenues.

Bottom line, Jeff's just wrong to associate federal budget problems with Social Security's fiscal problems. Social Security has periodically faced solvency problems since its inception simply because of its method of financing.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6827519/ns/business-eye_on_the_economy/t/social-security-solvency-political-spin/

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.

PF loves Debbie Wasserman Schultz, won't tolerate criticism

PolitiFact's matrix strikes again, keeping invisible to most my criticism of their fact check of DNC Chair and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.



See what you miss by not making me your "friend" on FaceBook?

The whole comment:

PF went way easy on Wasserman Schultz on this one.

Think about it. Medicare solvency improves dramatically by simply refusing to pay for health care services. But that's nothing to brag about, is it? PPACA does three things to Medicare and one of them *might* help with making Medicare service better (better payment for better outcomes, at least if providers don't avoid providing services for those with worse prospects for a good outcome). The other two are increased Medicare payroll taxes and decreased reimbursement to health care providers, neither of which is likely to improve Medicare on balance, and the latter isn't likely to occur anyway because of the "doc fix."

So, Wasserman Schultz isn't telling the whole story. She's claiming that the PPACA made Medicare more solvent *and* better for seniors overall (her underlying point). PolitiFact does her the colossal favor of ignoring the key part of her underlying point, then goes the extra mile by figuring her degree of error based on the incorrect figure (12 years).

*Why* was it wrong to say she was off by only a third? For purposes of comparison, the degree of error is normally calculated by determining the percentage of inflation for a figure that was exaggerated. For Wasserman Schultz, that figure is 50 percent (correct figure 8, exaggerated figure 12).

For a figure that was reported low to obtain a better appearance then PolitiFact's method was correct. For example: "I struck out only 8 times this series" The player struck out 12 times. The claim of 8 strikeouts is off by a third (33 percent).

PolitiFact is the greatest, isn't it?

Isn't it nice of PolitiFact to protect its readers from the truth?

Brandon Fox follies

The post, which apparently will not be showing up in the corresponding thread on PolitiFact's Facebook page:

***If Cain knows so much about these documents and speaks of them so frequently then such an elementary (school) mistake shouldn't happen.***

We might use the same reasoning to ridicule the president for campaigning... in all 57 states. Your reasoning is spurious. Extemporaneous speech easily leads to omissions and other slips of the tongue. The evidence says that is the case here with Cain.

***And you know damn well that those listening to him probably don't know the difference and think that those words really ARE in the Constitution.***

Those people listening to him in Atlanta have had a chance to listen to him for years, as he is a well-known radio personality there. Like me, they're likely to have heard Cain's full and accurate explanation prior to hearing his announcement speech. Not that it matters what the audience thinks. The point is whether Cain knows what he's talking about or not. The evidence says yes. You say no.

***So he was trying to intentionally mislead his audience, or he spoke incompetently about a topic he supposedly knows a lot about.***

Sure, if you'll admit that President Obama spoke incompetently about the number of states in the union even though he's relatively expert in knowing the number of states. Where's that teleprompter when you really need it?

***And yes, you are ignoring the obvious (as usual).***

About what, specifically? It's obvious in both videos I linked that Cain knows the contents of the founding documents as touching his announcement speech. Yet you're trying to leave it an open question whether he knows what he's talking about. Aren't you the one ignoring the evidence?