Just the Political Facts Ma'am, Just the Facts

With the campaigns in full swing, the Iowa Caucuses less that 2 months away & the general election 1 year out, the claims by the various candidates are flying fast & furious. Claims like:

"More people in this country have seen UFOs than I think approve of George Bush's presidency." Dennis Kucinich - 30 October 2007 Democratic Debate

"I had prostate cancer, five, six years ago. My chance of surviving prostate cancer, and thank God I was cured of it, in the United States, 82%. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England, only 44% under socialized medicine." Rudy Giuliani TV Ad

“It's just outrageous that under President Bush, the National Institutes of Health have been basically decreased in funding.” Hilary Clinton - 30 October 2007 Democratic Debate

"President Clinton "reduced the scale of our military dramatically." " Mitt Romney - 21 October 2007 Republican Debate

"The founders advised non-interventionism." Ron Paul - 21 October 2007 Republican Debate

So, which are true, which aren't & which are partially true? How is the average person to know? Good question.

There are some websites out there that are set up specifically to check up on the claims made by the candidates & determine their accuracy. 2 of these are PolitiFact.com & FactCheck.org.

PolitiFact is a project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly. They use "journalists and researchers from the Times and CQ will fact-check the accuracy of speeches, TV ads, interviews and other campaign communications." "The heart of PolitiFact is the Truth-O-Meter, which we use to rate the candidates’ claims and attacks.

The Truth-O-Meter is based on the concept that – especially in politics - truth is not black and white. Depending on how much information a candidate provides, a statement can be half true or barely true without being false." The meter puts the claim in 1 of 6 categories: True, Mostly True, Half True, Barely True or False. Then there is a special category for the most ridiculous claims Pants on Fire. They also include the reasons why they made such a declaration.

FactCheck is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. They are "a nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding."

FactCheck also points out that they accept "NO funding from business corporations, labor unions, political parties, lobbying organizations or individuals. It is funded primarily by the Annenberg Foundation." PolitiFact's sponsors both accept commercial advertising. The St. Petersburg Times does accept politcal advertising.

Even so, it appears that both sites do their best to be fair in their evaluations. Of course they have to depend on their sources being as free from bias as possible. It seems to me that they do do their best to keep bias out.

Even with these sites some people are going to blindly accept the claims by their candidate. The old "Don't confuse me with facts, my mind is already made up" crowd. Admittedly, we have all fallen into that category at times. But most of the time we want to be sure the claims are accurate.

These 2 sites are tools that can & do help us in that quest. Their researchers will have their work cut out for them in the year ahead. The rest of us will be the benificiaries of that hard work if we so chose.

Befofre I tell you what the truth is in the claims at the beginning, I'd like to add 1 more quote. This was said by Mike Huckabee at the 21 October 2007 Republican Debate. "The signers of the Declaration of Independence were "brave people, most of whom, by the way, were clergymen."" I would hope the accuracy of this 1 would be apparent to the average American with a decent knowledge of US history. (I don't assume it is though, given how poorly modern education often is in the area of the American Revolution.) In this case, for those few of you who don't know this claim won (& RIGHTLY SO) the PolitiFact Pants on Fire rating.

As for the rest of the claims, the 1st 3 are all false & the 4th claim is half true, while the 5th is mostly true. How did you do in discerning the accuracy?