Do you know what a fact is? That's easy. Of course you do. Fact is an objective truth not subject to interpretation or dispute. Water is liquid if it's above 32 degrees Fahrenheit. That's a fact. Thursday comes after Wednesday. That's a fact. The address of the White House is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
People who deal in actual facts can recognize that an assertion is either fact-based or its not. It's really not that complicated. That's for normal people who understand what a fact is. But there are other kinds of people, those who don't know what a fact is because they are apparently not intelligent enough to understand such a straightforward concept. Ironically, and tragically, many of these people have found work doing something that calls itself - but patently is not - "fact checking."
Take, for example, the complete morons who work for Politifact. This mentally challenged organization is a project of the Tampa Bay Times that exists ostensibly to examine the statements made by those in and around politics to see if they are fact-based. But that is not what Politifact actually does. What it actually does is write left-wing opinion columns disguised as "fact checking," and the results tend to range from hilarious to downright embarrassing.
Take this recent piece concerning Carly Fiorina. A blogger recently claimed that Fiorina had said, in reference to 30,000 people laid off during her tenure at Hewlett Packard, that she wished she had laid these people off more quickly. Politifact described this statement as "half true."
What? How can something be half true? Either it's true or it's not. And in this case, it's not only not true, it's about as blatantly false as a statement can be. The Washington Examiner lays the smack to the frauds at Politifact:
Of course, this is not how truth works. The person who purchased the Fiorina domain claimed that the 2016 presidential candidate was referring to the 30,000 laid-off employees when she said: "I would have done them all faster." The Politifact researcher even acknowledges that this is not true — Fiorina was not referring to 30,000 people laid off when she said she would have "done them all faster." And that means there is nothing true about the statement at all.
"Rather than musing that she should have laid off 30,000 people faster, the full article suggests she's referring to a select group of high-ranking executives," Politifact researcher Louis Jacobson wrote.
He's referring to an article in Fortune Magazine from 2005 where Fiorina was talking about laying off a select group of high-ranking executives faster, not 30,000 employees:
"Fiorina does not agree, naturally, that there's been a brain drain. In fact, she believes that one lesson she's learned while running HP is that she should have moved more quickly in ejecting certain people," Fortune's Carol Loomis wrote. "Smartened up now, she says, 'I would have done them all faster. Every person that I've asked to leave, whether it's been clear publicly or not, I would have done faster.'"
There's no way to even explore a possible explanation for how Politifact messed this up. When a person makes a statement that clearly means one thing, and someone claims it meant something else, the claim is false. Clearly. Plainly. Without controversy. Without ambiguity. It is 100 percent false.
And the fact that Politifact doesn't understand this means it is the most incompetent organization on the face of the earth at doing what it claims it does well. It is a ship of fools sailing into an ocean of crap, and it can't sink fast enough.
Politfact is run by inept morons who don't have the slightest idea what they're doing. What's more, the entire "fact check" genre of journalism is like this. So the next time someone you know posts a link to Politifact, FactCheck.org or any local yokel version like the so-called "Michigan Truth Squad," and thinks they've settled the issue because the fact checkers have spoken, please respond with a link to this column so everyone can be reminded that the "fact checkers" are morons with no credibility and certainly no authority whatsoever.
Do you know what a fact is? That's easy. Of course you do. Fact is an objective truth not subject to interpretation or dispute. Water is liquid if it's above 32 degrees Fahrenheit. That's a fact. Thursday comes after Wednesday. That's a fact. The address of the White House is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
People who deal in actual facts can recognize that an assertion is either fact-based or its not. It's really not that complicated. That's for normal people who understand what a fact is. But there are other kinds of people, those who don't know what a fact is because they are apparently not intelligent enough to understand such a straightforward concept. Ironically, and tragically, many of these people have found work doing something that calls itself - but patently is not - "fact checking."
