Louis Jacobson

Politifact: Harry Reid's '30 Percent of Women Served' Planned Parenthood Claim Is a 'Pants on Fire' Lie
By Tom Blumer | August 5, 2015 | 10:21 PM EDT

Call the "Ripley's Believe It or Not" people.

Politifact, the alleged fact-checking site which has for years almost invariably insisted on calling obvious truths stated by Republicans and conservatives "Half True" at best and often worse, while taking flat-out lies by leftists and pretending they contain some element of truth, has issued a "Pants on Fire" rating on Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's outrageously false claim last week that Planned Parenthood is "the only health care that a significant number of women get," specifically contending that this is the case for 30 percent of women.

PolitiFact's 'Half True' Evaluation of Fiorina Layoffs Claim Is Utterly False and Dishonest
By Tom Blumer | May 17, 2015 | 11:52 PM EDT

On May 5, PolitiFact's Louis Jacobson kept with the alleged "fact-checking" web site's actual role as pack of leftist hacks by issuing a fundamentally dishonest "Half True" ruling on a statement made by CarlyFiorina.org's cybersquatter. I raise the matter now because the web site's critics, while raising most of the relevant points, haven't gone far enough in tearing apart Jacobson's work.

As his headline states, the cyberquatter "accuses Carly Fiorina of wishing she'd laid off 30,000 employees more quickly" during the Republican presidential candidate's tenure as Hewlett-Packard's CEO which ended a decade ago. The squatter is lying. She didn't make that statement in connection with H-P's layoffs. That should have been the end of it, but Jacobson still pretended that the lie is "Half True" in his evaluation.

Politifact: Jarrett's 'Nothing Forces Cancellations' Claim Is 'False,' But Obama's 'You Can Keep Your Plan' Still 'Half True'
By Tom Blumer | November 3, 2013 | 9:46 AM EST

Even when it occasionally does credible work, Politifact, the website which pretends to be the ultimate arbiter of the truth or falsehood of claims made by politicians and public figures, continues to beclown itself. On Monday, Matt Hadro at NewsBusters noted the absurdity of Politifact's unchanged "Half True" assessment of President Obama's June 2012 claim — a claim made with minor variations more than 20 times over a four-year period — that "If you're one of the more than 250 million Americans who already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance."

Two days after Matt's post, Politifact rated a Valerie Jarrett tweet — "FACT: Nothing in #Obamacare forces people out of their health plans" — as "False," but made no revision to its "Half True" rating of Obama's core claim.

PolitiFact 'Beclowns Itself' in 'Half-True' Evaluation of Walker's Factual Claim About State Unemployment
By Tom Blumer | September 4, 2012 | 2:39 PM EDT

I really can't do much with this one beyond relaying the absurd particulars involved in PolitiFact's incredible conclusion that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker made a statement which was only "Half True" about unemployment in the various states in his speech last week at the Republican National Convention.

On August 17, the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics opened its monthly Regional and State Employment and Unemployment report as follows: "Regional and state unemployment rates were generally little changed or slightly higher in July. Forty-four states recorded unemployment rate increases, two states and the District of Columbia posted rate decreases, and four states had no change ..." The Associated Press's opening sentence in its coverage of the report's contents was: "Unemployment rates rose in 44 U.S. states in July, the most states to show a monthly increase in more than three years and a reflection of weak hiring nationwide." After the jump, readers will see the awful statement Walker made in Tampa:

Politifact Won't Apply 'Truth-O-Meter' in Article About Obama Eating Dog Meat as Boy
By Tom Blumer | April 21, 2012 | 5:14 PM EDT

Karl at Hot Air and others recording their objections at Twitter caught Politifact being two-faced in deciding who gets the "Truth-O-Meter" text.

As Karl notes: "PolitiFact rated the story about the Romneys transporting the family dog on the roof of their car as 'Mostly True.' And PolitiFact rated the story about former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee frying squirrels in a popcorn poppersimply 'True.'" But in tackling the topic of President Obama's boyhood appetite, even though the item is in the web site's "Truth-O-Meter" directory (URL -- www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2012/apr/20/context-obama-dog-eating-indonesia/), it kept the Truth-O-Meter in the closet, and only lamely reproduced some of the verbiage from Obama's Dreams of My Father, introduced by the following narrative (original was in italics; internal links were in original):