Reshared post from +Mehdi Pieloor
Can't believe I actually fucking did this…
Because someone didn't like Ryan being called a liar (in a post by +John R Webster), and made a general dare (you know, provided us Liberuhls aren't too lazy to do some work).
So I did the goddamned work. Copy of my reply in the OP follows:
EDIT: Actually, don't feel like dealing with comments on this…
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OK. So I went to Politifact, selected the "2012 Presidential", went through all 39 pages as of Friday, October 12th, 2012, 6:30 PM – 7:00 PM, and made a tally.
I only counted the Presidential candidates and their VP nominees (for clarity's sake, I ignored the pundits, the 3rd party candidates, the senators and governors, and the PACs).
I went through the trouble of weighing the tally, using a simple calculation:
Pants On Fire: 1 x False (and I think that's a fair weight)
False: 1 x False
Mostly False: (0.75 x False) + (0.25 x True)
Half True: (0.5 x false) + (0.5 x True)
Mostly True: (0.25 x False) + (0.75 x True)
True: 1 x TrueThen divided the total entries for each candidate by the calculated number. The results are listed as percentages of falsehood versus percentages truths.
Table and chart saved as a PNG here:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/6576520/preslies.jpgIt's a known fact that all politicians lie. Their jobs depend on it, of course. However, it is interesting to see how the democratic nominees speak more truth (±58% of the time) than the republicans (not quite 40%). It's also interesting to see that Romney had his pants on fire more than 10% of the time, compared to Obama's less than 2%.
Also telling: Paul Ryan's very first entries were all on the False side, whereas Biden's first entries were all on the True side. You'll also notice that Biden may have used some half-truths, but no outright lies.
If you feel so inclined, you can go through the same process to verify my numbers..
I'm very well aware of the fact that either side of the aisle is a crapshoot, but I'm also not forgetting that Obama has been able to keep a large number of his campaign promises, and a lot of his promises were actively fought by the Republicans, including some acts that would have been beneficial for War veterans and long time job seekers.
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Disagree – you need not accept that Politifact is 100% correct 100% of the time. You need only accept that Politifact is "mostly right, most of the time"
OR
You need only accept that Politifact is the same source that the person making the above referenced dare used/uses
i.e. If your claim is "all politicians lie – Politifact proves it" and my counterclaim is "Politifact shows that Republicans lie WAY, WAY, WAY MORE than Democrats", it's a perfectly valid counterclaim.
Also, you can half lie when you're talking about the budget.
Example:
The Florin Party claims "We are going to reduce the budgetary deficit by 10 Billion shekels in 2014"
Truth: The Florin Party has actual plans to reduce spending by 5 Billion shekels in 2014.
Truth: The Florin Party has actual plans to increase tax revenue by 2 Billion shekels in 2014.
Lie: The remaining 3 Billion shekels will come from the Florin Party taking credit for existing spending cuts or revenue increase that the Guilder Party enacted during a Guilder-Majority administration.