Retorical Question

[Thomas Fitzcharles]

Good Day, All.

Do any politians tell the turth? First the Rep. put out a bunch of spin. Then the Dem. counter with a bunch of spin. Then you go to a couple of the fact check sites and they differ in thier facts and how the present an issue. Who can you trust. I am so sick and frustrated with this whole election season. I usually eat up this stuff, but not this year. Sorry for my rant but you try to be an informed voter and this is what you get.

Sincerely

Thomas

[MorGrendel]

Same here, I can't even enjoy Daily Show/Colbert Report.

[Berserker]

Here is my recommendation. First off, don't lose hope as things are not as bad as you think they may be.

When you read news, know the bias and take it into account. For example, if you read an article on FOX news bashing Obama, know that they are right wing, so take it with a grain of salt. Same goes for MSNBC bashing Romney. They are left wing. If the same story is on both networks, the truth will be somewhere in the middle.

Ensure you read news from multiple sites to get a broad perspective. Also, read foreign sites as they tend to be less biased since they don't have a direct stake in our polical system.
Here's what I read:
- Local: WBAL (always fun to see who got shot last night in B'More)
- Domestic: Fox, MSNBC, CNN, AP News and Politico(this last one is solely political news)
- Foreign sites: BBC and Al Jazeera (thanks Fritz for pointing this one out to me. It's quite nice)
- If you have the money, The economist is actually quite good (but not cheap). My personal favorite and the most expensive: Stratfor.com

As for fact checking, don't trust any fact checking done by the papers themselves. If MSNBC comes out with a fact check it will inherently be biased to the left. Same goes with FOX.

I personally find that Politifact.com to be the best fact checking website out. It is non-partisan and un-biased and as such you will see everybody get dinged on their claims.

Lastly, be very weary of partisan think-tanks as theycan be quite misleading. As much as you can, try to keep to non-partisan think tank studies.

In closing, fact-check everything! If you see numbers that are too good to be true, they probably are. Do the math yourself and be mindful of the timeframes and things they include/exclude from that. Here's a very good example of what I say:

"The irony is Republicans created more government jobs than Democrats.
Government Jobs Created By President: (Thousands)
George W. Bush ....1719
Barrack Obama .....-405

source: Bureau of Labor Statistics http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cesbtab1.htm
Sadly you can not link to their graph so you have to scroll down and check "Government" and click "retrieve data". That gives you a table which you can adjust by year and frequency by clicking "More Formatting Options" to the right."

So seeing the credentials, you might think, if the Bureau of Labor Statistics mentioned this, it must be true. The key here is that these guys actually came up with these statistics based on the data available at the Bureau. The Bureau didn't actually come out and said that. So I went and did the math myself and it turns out that it's only true if you include all government jobs (including state and local). If you only looked at federal jobs, this would not be true. And of course, since presidents don't control the local and state jobs, the result is not meaningful.

So there. Don't be discouraged. Read much, be weary of what you read, fact-check it, and smile. =)

[MorGrendel]

I shouldn't need to fact check; the bastards should stop lying.

[Fritz]

I'm still in disbelief that Clinton, Mr. I-did-not-have-sex-with-that-woman, gave a speech that the fact checkers have largely gave the thumbs up to. What have we come to when Bill Clinton is the honest guy.

[Berserker]

In the ideal world, fact-checkers would be out of business. In the real world, the best politicians are the ones that can meld truth and lies together. Unfortunately, that is nothing new. If anything, today we can keep a better eye on their lies then in the past and we have the ability to be more informed about everything they say and do then before. Perhaps that is why it seems they lie more than before. I think politicians have always lied, but now it's harder to get away with the lies as communication is much easier, so more resources are available to fact-check them (aka, you don't need to be in the same state to fact-check a politician anymore).

Don't lose hope, don't become cynical and continue to fight for what you believe in. USA IS a better place then it was 50 years ago =)