Sarah Palin posted a picture of Florida lawmakers to illustrate foreigners cheering to celebrate the Paris accords costing America billions.

Courtesy of Politifact:  

It’s clear that Sarah Palin hates the Paris climate agreement. 

What’s unclear is why she used a photo of Florida lawmakers to make her point in a Facebook meme. 

"Don’t be fooled! The Paris climate accord is a scam," stated the headline at the top of Palin’s Facebook post June 6, 2017. (By June 7, the Facebook meme was no longer available but PolitiFact had taken a screenshot of her post, which had been shared at least 8,000 times.) 

Beneath the headline is a photo of an unidentified group of mostly men cheering. The Facebook post doesn’t identify the people in the photo, but they are Florida House members at the state Capitol in Tallahassee. 

Beneath the photo Palin shared is text that says: "They pretend it’s about fixing our environment ... But it’s really about stealing billions from the American people and giving it to foreign countries, governments and lobbyists!"

To be clear many of the folks in the photo are Florida Republicans who are certainly not fans of the Paris Climate Accords, and in fact many of who do not accept the conventional wisdom about climate change.

When Politico contacted them about this Facebook post, they had this to say:

Florida Republicans and insiders couldn’t stop mocking and laughing at Palin’s error. 

“I’m appalled. … As the owner of a publishing company, I find it appalling that she would use a low-res picture like this when a high-res picture is readily available,” joked state Rep. Scott Plakon, who’s in the picture standing with his hands together as he claps with joy. 

Plakon said, “I was almost in tears with laughter” that Palin got it so wrong with her 9:37 a.m. Tuesday post — which was shared nearly 8,000 times and generated hundreds of comments before it was deleted. “I’m not sure what she’s saying. Are we cheering for Paris or against it? I think she’s saying we’re celebrating Paris.”

You know making mistakes is simply part of blogging, but remember Palin outsources her Facebook posts and blog posts to a third party, who apparently gets paid for their work. 

I mean if this were the work of some coffee swilling middle aged dude in his pajama bottoms, that would be one thing. But this is a paid professional posting on the Facebook page of a former D-list political celebrity.

I think one would expect better.

But then again this is Palin, so perhaps this is exactly what we should expect.

Sarah Palin finds yet another opportunity to play the victim while falsely claiming she was right about "death panels."

So that tweet shows up on Twitter and of course is brought to the attention of the Wasilla Wendigo, who quickly takes to Facebook to post a kind of victory lap/pity party:

After I spoke of Obamacare's Death Panels, the President deceived the nation in his State of the Union address, claiming I was the liar. (Actually just about everybody concluded you were a liar.)

Barack (That's "Mr. President" to you lady): tell that to patients now being refused health care. 

The backlash from the President's continued attacks on my integrity remains immense (The President rarely spoke about you Sarah, the backlash came in response to your own stupidity.), but it's nothing compared to the tragic hopelessness that formerly disillusioned Americans now feel. Ironically, Obama and Congress could have proved me wrong. (Oh they did.) Granted, the President and media's obstinate clinging to the failed Obamacare boondoggle was a given, but an incalculable disappointment in this is knowing Congress held the purse strings for this disastrous government healthcare takeover, yet funded it anyway. 

Media: why no accountability on this? Why ignore Hillary's role in supporting Obamacare? 

 - Sarah Palin

What Palin is referencing here is the story of a  terminally ill California woman whose insurance company refuses to pay for a different chemotherapy drug that "might" buy her some more time.

Instead, due to California's new End of Life Option Act, this woman learned that a drug that would let her die with dignity at a time of her choosing WAS covered by her health insurance.

The woman, a Roman Catholic, was of course horrified, and this has become the cause celebre among the Right to Lifers.

So what does this have to do with Sarah Palin's famous "death panels?" Not a damn thing.

What Palin was talking about back in 2009 was this: 

"As more Americans delve into the disturbing details of the nationalized health care plan that the current administration is rushing through Congress, our collective jaw is dropping, and we're saying not just no, but hell no!" Palin wrote. 

"The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's ‘death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

Essentially what Palin was saying was that "death panels" would portion out health care to those deemed worthy, and that others would be left to die on their own.

THAT was the lie that she was called out for, and it has NOTHING to do with this California woman's case.

NOR does it have anything to do really with Obamacare.

Insurance companies have always made choices over which medicines and treatments they are willing to pay for, and that is typically based on it's positive impact and yes its cost.

And Obamacare has actually fixed some of that by forcing insurance companies to provide insurance for many who would not have qualified for it in the past, and by not allowing them to kick clients off of their insurance once they became ill.

In fact the argument could be made that without Obamacare this woman would likely have lost her insurance already. 

The medicine that this woman's insurance company is balking at "might" extend her life, but then again it might not.

So the insurance company on their own, with no "Death panels" involved, has decided that it is not worth the extra cost to spend the money on a drug that might have no effect whatsoever.

Remember this woman's cancer is terminal, there is no cure, only the possibility of a few more years or months.

It may seem harsh, and if it were your loved one you would almost certainly feel that it was, but it has nothing to do with Obamacare, "death panels," and certainly nothing to do with Sarah "Look at me, look at me, look at me now" Palin.

Rush Limbaugh warns that fact checking is a "vehicle for them (Liberals) to do opinion journalism under the guise of fairness."

Courtesy of Dead State:  

“There is no fact-checking,” he declared. 

“The fact that The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and USA Today, and all these other papers and networks now have fact-checkers is for one reason. It allows them to fool you into thinking they have an objective, nonpartisan staff or person analyzing everything the candidates are saying, and telling you what they’re saying is true, or what they’re saying is false.” 

Limbaugh then basically admitted that reality does indeed have a liberal bias. 

“When in fact the fact-checkers are no different than the biased left-leaning reporters and columnists at these papers and on networks. But the fact-check, the idea that it is a fact-check story is designed to say to you that it is objective and analytically fair, and all it is, is a vehicle for them to do opinion journalism under the guise of fairness. Which, if you fall for it, gives it even more power, because if you think that the fact-checkers like PolitiFact or Snopes, or whoever else, if you quote them constantly as the Bible, well then you’ve fallen for it.”

To be clear this is a naked attempt to undermine fact checkers who have been making Donald Trump's life, and let's face the lives of a lot of GOP types, a living hell lately.

If you can smear the fact checkers are left wing operatives then truth becomes a matter of faith rather than a matter of fact.

Now you might be tempted to simply dismiss this by saying 'Come on Gryphen you know they idiots are allergic to facts. Why even bother to care that they think fact checkers are on Hillary's payroll?"

That is a valid point, and I would almost agree with you.

Except for this.

Courtesy of The Hill: 

Voters who like Donald Trump have doubts about the legitimacy of November's election, a new poll finds. 

Half of those who view Trump favorably say they have little or no confidence in the integrity of the election, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released Saturday. 

Only about one-third of the respondents who identified as Republican said that they have confidence in the vote count. 

"Trump has finally said something that that I've been thinking for years," one Trump supporter from Columbia, Mo. told the AP. "I don't think the votes have been counted properly for years. There's voter fraud and attempts to game the system. I don't trust it at all."

Now this is really where the rubber hits the road.

Because if after Hillary wins this election Donald Trump openly questions its validity we could have an honest to goodness civil war on our hands.

But even if it does not go that far you can bet the farm that when the 2018 midterms roll around that every former Trump supporter, Right Wing fanatic, and frustrated Republican is going to come out in force to "right the wrong" of the 2016 election by voting in a whole bunch of Teabagger types to sabotage every single thing that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats try to accomplish.

It will be the obstructionism that faced President Obama on steroids, and it will be VERY effective.

If facts no longer matter, if there is not at least one news source trusted by all sides of the political spectrum, then our ability to negotiate, inform, and correct misinformation will be lost completely.

There will no longer be anything called "truth," there will only be opinion, and the crevasse that now separates the Right from the Left will widen until we have our own version of the cold war right here within the United States of America.

Politifact confirms that the "Trump effect" in schools is real.

Clinton, citing 'Trump Effect,' says teachers are reporting more bullying in schools. Mostly True. https://t.co/TXlB3Fp1ZL

— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) August 26, 2016

Courtesy of Mediaite:  

Hillary Clinton has been attacking Donald Trump all week for hiring people who are considered by some to be racists. She’s been hitting him for catering to the alt-right and for promoting messages of intolerance and even cruelty. One of the things she said about him was that there has been a “Trump effect” in schools that involves more and more reported instances of bullying. Supposedly, children hear his divisive messages, go to school, and pick on kids who aren’t like them. 

Is that true? 

PolitiFact actually says that for the most part, it is!

So we go from a President who preached reaching out to our enemies, and working towards compromise with those on the other side of the ideological fence, to a GOP candidate whose personality is so obnoxious that it inspires bullying on the playground.

Is this what the Republican party means about taking their country back?

Back to what? Racial intolerance, inequality for women, and anti-gay beat downs in the locker room?

Yeah, actually that's probably exactly what they mean by that.

About those polls showing Bernie Sanders doing better against Trump than Hillary Clinton...

Okay so this gets brought up quite frequently by Bernie supporters as their last best argument as to why the super delegates should jumps ship and support their candidate at the convention:

"Bernie Sanders polls better than Hillary does against Donald Trump, and if we choose her Trump will be next President."

I have argued against this repeatedly, but I thought it might be helpful to hear what Politifact had to say about this topic: 

So Sanders is correct that he fares better against Trump than Clinton does in every poll over the past six weeks -- more than 6 points better than Clinton, on average. 

And Sanders is beating Trump by an average of 12 points in these eight polls, so "big numbers" seems like a reasonable description for Sanders to use. 

Case closed? Not quite, say polling experts. 

Clinton has been scrutinized and attacked as a public figure for a quarter century, but Sanders -- even after running for president for a year -- is a relatively new figure to voters nationally. So while a lot of voters’ minds are already made up about Clinton based on her long history in the public eye, it remains to be seen how open potential voters will be to supporting Sanders once Republicans start airing negative attacks, especially ones that note his identification as a democratic socialist. (We have previously reported that, according to polls, being a socialist is a less attractive quality for voters than being an atheist.) 

Kerwin Swint, a political scientist at Kennesaw State University, told PolitiFact Georgia that Sanders shows up so strongly in head-to-head polls because Trump and Clinton have such high negatives. 

"General election polls don’t mean much until the conventions are over and you get to late summer or early fall," Swint said. "A lot of voters don’t look at Sanders as a legitimate threat. It’s almost like he’s an imaginary candidate."

I like that "imaginary candidate" analogy, because in many ways a Sanders campaign is a far left wing liberal dream that has no chance of ever coming true.

Now pay attention to that comment about being a Socialist polling worse than being an Atheist, because that's kind of the key.

As I have written before Atheists often poll even lower than pedophiles in trustworthiness, and being elected as an out of the closet Atheist is a non-starter in a national election.

So if Socialists poll even lower, that means anti-Bernie advertisements for the Republican party simply write themselves.

All Donald Trump has to do is run commercials of Bernie Sanders trying to explain to various pundits that he is a "Democratic Socialist" and his poll numbers will drop through the floor.

It does not make a scintilla of difference if Donald Trump is a racist, woman hating, Putin dry humping egomaniac, because at least he is not a SOCIALIST!

And that is only one line of attack (Though arguably the most effective.), there is still plenty more opposition research to use against Bernie in the general.

And if you don't think the American people are dumb enough to be so easily swayed then ask yourself how come Hillary Clinton's poll numbers were in the mid to high sixties while she was Secretary of State and have now dropped to the low forties since the Republicans, and of course Sanders supporters, have started going after her non-stop for the last year?

Basically average Americans are easily manipulated sheep simply waiting for somebody to herd them from one place to the other. And in the case of the voting public nobody has started herding them away from the Vermont Senator.

Yet.

Bernie Sanders has high poll numbers because nobody has cared enough about him to try and get them lowered. That is the benefit of being an "imaginary candidate." 

How truthful are the presidential candidates?

Source

Kind of surprising that Hillary does better with truthfulness than Bernie Sanders, don't you think?

So much for the whole "She's untrustworthy" meme.

Well Bernie Sanders certainly has no problem calling Donald Trump what he is. A liar.

Source

Courtesy of BernieSanders.com: 

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders issued the following statement on Wednesday after Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump, in a speech in Hilton Head, South Carolina, accused Sanders of wanting to raise tax rates to 90 percent: 

“It appears that Donald Trump, a pathological liar, simply cannot control himself. He lies, lies and lies again. Today, he repeated his lie that I want to raise taxes to 90 percent. Totally untrue. And PolitiFact gave Trump’s same statement last October a ‘Pants-on-Fire’ rating. 

“What is true is that at a time of massive income and wealth inequality billionaires like Trump should pay their fair share of taxes. Unlike Trump, who wants to give huge tax breaks to his fellow billionaires and large multi-national corporations, what we need is real tax reform which asks the very wealthiest people in this country and large, profitable corporations to start paying their fair share of taxes. 

“It is absurd that in America today we have multi-national corporations who stash their profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens and, in a given year, pay nothing in federal income taxes. It is grossly unfair that there are millionaires in this country who take advantage of all kinds of loopholes and end up paying an effective tax rate lower than a middle-class worker.”

"It appears that Donald Trump, a pathological liar, simply cannot control himself. He lies, lies and lies again." 

Now see this is how every single presidential candidate, from both sides of the aisle, and news reporter should refer to Donald Trump from now on.

Everybody already knows it but hearing it said out loud over and over again might be enough to drive him into a Twitter rant that will finally end his freak show of a campaign.

Politifact's "Lie of the Year" is essentially everything that comes out of Donald Trump's mouth.

Courtesy of Politifact: 

It’s the trope on Trump: He’s authentic, a straight-talker, less scripted than traditional politicians. That’s because Donald Trump doesn’t let facts slow him down. Bending the truth or being unhampered by accuracy is a strategy he has followed for years.

Politifact then goes on to list some of Trump's many, many whoppers:

• "I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down," he said at a Nov. 21 rally in Birmingham, Ala. "And I watched in Jersey City, N.J., where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering." Pants on Fire. There is no video of thousands of people in Jersey City cheering. Weeks later, Trump continues to stand by his claim but has not been able to point to evidence to back it up. Public safety officials on the ground in New Jersey say it never happened. 

• "The Mexican government ... they send the bad ones over." Pants on Fire. There’s no evidence to show the Mexican government encourages criminals to cross the border. Most illegal immigration comes from people seeking work. Recent estimates show illegal immigration from Mexico dropped off dramatically during the recession and has remained low.

 • "Whites killed by whites — 16%. Whites killed by blacks — 81%," said an image he shared on Twitter. Pants on Fire. Most people are killed by someone they know, and someone of the same race. The correct number for whites killed by whites was 82 percent in 2014, while the number of whites killed by blacks was 15 percent.

Trust me Politifact has many more to share as well, but of course most of us can also undoubtedly name off a half dozen or more ourselves.

Essentially Donald Trump is a wealthy man surrounded by sycophants, so usually there is nobody around to call him out on his bullshit.

And though it seems fairly clear that the Republican base does not care about lying, in fact they seem to support it, I imagine the American people as a whole have higher standards.

Hey look this is yet another thing that he and Sarah Palin can bond over while eating bad pizza on paper plates. After all she was the 2009 winner and she is STILL pissed off about it.

"Death Panels" are back! Cue the Sarah Palin outrage machine!

I know a lot of you were worried I did not see this yesterday, but I did.

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

Physicians would be paid to discuss end-of-life options with Medicare patients who want their wishes spelled out in advance under a regulation proposed by the federal government Wednesday. 

Medical societies and seniors' groups like the AARP have long supported so-called advance care planning as a way for patients to consider whether they want intensive medical care in the event of a life-threatening illness near the close of their lives, and to make their preferences known to their loved ones in writing. But Medicare has never had a mechanism with which to pay doctors for this counseling, except during a physical exam when beneficiaries first enroll in the program. 

“Today’s proposal supports individuals and families who wish to have the opportunity to discuss advance care planning with their physician and care team, as part of coordinated, patient- and family-centered care," Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Chief Medical Officer Patrick Conway said in a statement. "CMS looks forward to gathering public input on this proposal.”

The article goes on to point out that an earlier version of this option was derailed due to Sarah Palin's  histrionics over the so-called "death panels" which earned her Politifact's "Lie of the Year" back in 2009.

You may remember that back then Palin's ghostwriter wrote this on her Facebook page:

"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

Which is so stupid that you actually risk losing brain cells by reading it.

Well fortunately today cooler, less ignorant, heads are prevailing and this end-of-life option is being reintroduced.

Which I think we all realize means at some point Palin will fire up her ghostwriter and post yet another brain cell murdering diatribe on her only remaining media outlet, Facebook.

I am sure reporters and pundits have their itchy fingers hovering over their keyboards in anticipation.

In the "not news to anybody" category Fox News is not only lying more than any other cable news outlet, they are lying more than ever.

Courtesy of Politifact:  

MSNBC and CNN have improved ever so slightly on our TV network scorecards, while Fox News has moved a touch in the opposite direction. 

At Fox and Fox News, 10 percent of the claims we’ve rated have been True, 11 percent Mostly True, 18 percent Half True, 21 percent Mostly False, 31 percent False and nine percent Pants on Fire. 

That means about 60 percent of the claims we’ve checked have been rated Mostly False or worse. Here’s how it breaks down (as of Jan. 27, 2015):

Politifact goes on to suggest that about 44% of MSNBC Reports are rated false or mostly false as well, however I have a problem with that as they have been called out before, by no less than Rachel Maddow herself, for labeling MSNBC stories false when actually they were well researched and factual.

And besides there is scientific evidence to back up Fox's penchant for misinformation as well as the reasons they do so.

Actually I think we all realize that Fox News is forced to lie becasue their audience simply cannot handle the truth, and if they heard it they would turn off their cable boxes and go back to talk radio where they will only hear what they want to hear.

Despite evidence supporting the claim, Lisa Murkowski would really like Mark Begich to stop saying they work well together.

So recently in Alaska we have been seeing this ad playing all over the place.

Nice right?

Well not if you are Senator Murkowski and you stand to benefit if the Republicans can take over the Senate.

Here is more from Mediaite: 

Begich, who’s running for re-election in Alaska, began running an ad called “Great Team” which highlights the fact that he and Murkowski have voted the same nearly 80% of the time — a claim that’s actually supported by Politifact as “mostly true.” (It’s certainly much higher than most bipartisan Senate delegations.) 

But Murkowski, who stands to become the Chairwoman of the Energy Committee if the GOP wins the Senate, figuratively bolted from any accusations of bipartisanship by sending Begich a cease-and-desist letter. “This advertisement is factually incorrect,” it stated, according to TPM. “It also misuses Senator Murkowski’s image, and implies her support, without her permission — and, in fact, over her known objections.” 

It’s perfectly legal to use Murkowski’s image (the photo is an AP image), so Begich is in the clear. “Alaskans have responded positively to the message that Alaska’s congressional delegation works together across party lines to do what’s best for Alaska,” he added in a statement to The Hill.

Of course it does not hurt Murkowski in any way to be outed as working in a bipartisan fashion, as she is all but bulletproof up here.

But it does say something about the mindset in Alaska that Mark would rather be associated with a Republican Senator from his state than the Democratic President of the United States.

However I can guarantee you that after this election both Lisa and Mark will have no problem teaming up again.

I don't think this should come as a surprise to anyone.

97 of 100 poorest counties in America are in Republican states. Conservative policies don't work. #UniteBlue pic.twitter.com/Sn3l0X5l11
— TruthtoConservatives (@ToConservatives) July 28, 2014

Just in case you think this is way off click here.

When it comes to economics the Republicans are idiots, and yet they continue to sell the meme that it is THEY who are good at managing money.

A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that economies almost always grow faster under a Democratic President than  under a Republican one.

Yeah, no shit Sherlock.

Sarah Palin uses recent revelations about the VA falsifying records to once again try to defend her "death panels" lie.

Since when do injured soldiers wear their uniforms while lying in a hospital bed?

Courtesy of ole Death Panels Facebook page:

 I love this American Awakening when finally more voters can’t say they weren’t warned. Stamped with the media’s “Lie of the Year”, I had the sticky label on my back for years used as convenient “proof” that commonsense conservatives just don’t know what we’re talking about.  (Yes, becasue they don't.) Denouncing from the Orwellian Left and a squishy Right ensued. But the truth stares us in the face and pocketbook, especially as we see the unworkable Obamacare. 

What happens next is the Left will subtly suggest moving America toward a single-payer system, which was their intention all along. (Really? Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! I can hardly wait!) Watch for this gradual, but driving, descent into statism.

So, are you still relying on Obamacare to help and not hurt you? On the Democrat’s watch, health care in the hands of unaccountable bureaucrats proves Reagan’s adage that government is not the solution; government is the problem. (Well under Republicans, sure.)

And speaking of the VA scandal, we’ve seen how Obama merely gives lip service to his bureaucrats “investigating” his bureaucracy, so don’t be surprised if he finds nothing wrong in the government’s VA health system – “NOT EVEN A SMIDGEN”! 

- Sarah Palin

Okay well you know this whole VA thing IS a real scandal, and somebody needs to get a public spanking over it. And probably fired as well.

According to journalist Dana Milbank that choice is clear:

Eric Shinseki has served his country honorably as a twice-wounded officer in Vietnam, as Army chief of staff and finally as President Obama’s secretary of veterans affairs. 

But his maddeningly passive response to the scandal roiling his agency suggests that the best way Shinseki can serve now is to step aside.

Sounds about right.

However despite Palin's claims, what is happening at the VA is by no means an indictment against Obamacare, or even government run healthcare in general.

After all Medicare seems to be doing well, and the Medicaid expansion seems to be going well. (In the states that adopted it of course.)

Besides the facts are that the problems at the VA started happening well before Obama took office: 

Paul Sullivan, the executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, a veterans’ advocacy group that sued the VA in federal court, said attempts by the White House to portray Bush as an advocate for veterans is beyond shameful. 

“Bush is the worst failure for our veterans since Hoover,” Sullivan said, expressing shock that the President “would shamefully continue his legacy of lies to the American people as he and his political cronies are forced to leave office on Jan. 20.” 

Sullivan disputed some of Bush’s claims as misleading, such as the assertion that he doubled funding for the VA. “However, President Bush failed to disclose that the number of veterans seeking VA healthcare doubled, from 2.7 million to 5.5 million, and that rising healthcare inflation actually resulted in a net decrease in spending per veteran by VA during the past eight years,” he said.

Yes President Obama promised to fix this, and he selected General Shinseki to do just that. And I don't think it is appropriate to make excuses for the number of patients who waited months to see a doctor, and the information destroyed to cover that up.

However as bad as this is, and yes it's bad, it does NOTHING to change the fact that Sarah Palin absolutely earned that 2009 Lie of the Year for her death panels BS.

She was wrong then, and she remains wrong today.

Now about that photo at the top of this page which Palin included with her Facebook post. Did you notice something off about that photo?

Here is the President visiting various wounded vets in their hospital rooms.

Now this is the President of the United States, and yet these soldiers did not bother to climb out of their beds and put on their uniforms in order to show respect for their commander in chief.

And yet when Sarah Palin visited a vet, he was all dressed up like he had was going to the Commissary to buy some groceries.

Now I'm not saying it's fake, but remember this IS Sarah Palin we're talking about.

After being completely off base about Syria, Sarah Palin decides to release a video which doubles down on her "Lie of the Year" from 2009.

Courtesy of Miss "Never Admit a Mistake's" Facebook page: 

Enough of this foreign fiasco distraction. Get back to work. It is time to bomb Obamacare.

Yeah enough of this stuff that I simply don't understand, let's go revisit another time that I was horribly wrong and try to gloss it over. 

For those of you who are confused by the quickly edited imagery and seizure inducing flashing lights, here is a good explanation as to why Palin was wrong in the first place, and why nothing has changed.

Personally I think it is funny that she is going back to this while labeling the biggest news story going right now as a "foreign fiasco distraction." Methinks somebody wants to get noticed, but NOT bitchslapped for being an idiot when it comes to Middle Eastern affairs.

Somehow I don't think this is any safer for her.

PolitiFact finds that Republicans lie three times more often than Democrats. Seems low to me.

Courtesy of TPM:  

One of the most prominent political fact-checkers has shown Republicans to be much less honest than their Democratic counterparts, according to findings from a study released Tuesday by George Mason University. 

The study, conducted from the beginning of President Barack Obama's second term in January through last week, found that PolitiFact.com has rated Republican claims as false three times more often than Democratic claims. 

According to the study, 32 percent of GOP claims were rated as "false" or "pants on fire" by PolitiFact, compared with 11 percent of claims by Democrats.

Yeah I have a hard time thinking of a time when the Republicans AREN'T lying about something!

As we know all politicians do lie on occasion, so I am well aware that there are Democrats who have told some humdingers, but as Rachel Maddow has pointed out on more than one occasion PolitiFact does not always seem to  recognize all facts equally: 

“The statement you were fact-checking is true, and until somebody figures out how to sue you in order to retrieve the meaning of the word fact from the dark and airless hole you have stuffed it into, Politifact, then no, it is not okay to just make this stuff up. You are truly terrible. Fact checking has to count for something, and Politifact, you are ruining it for everyone.”

So let me just go out on a limb here and say that the ratio of lying Republicans to lying Democrats is significantly higher. 

Rachel Maddow to Politifact: "You are fired!"

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As somebody who has used Politifact numerous times to check on the validity of stories, or statements from politicians, I applaud Rachel for calling them out on this egregious mistake.

If you are going to identify yourself as a NON-PARTISAN fact checker, than you have to rise to the bar that you set for yourself.  This was an absolute failure to do so.

If this is the best they can do, and it is not the first time they have made a similar mistake, then I suggest they change their name. Perhaps to something more fitting like, Politi-guess or Politi-opinion.

Because as of right now they have made a joke out of the name Politifact.

As predicted Palin's Facebook ghostwriter cannot give up on her feud with Politifact.

As I posted yesterday Palin's ghostwriter, Rebecca Mansour, is engaged in a very aggressive battle to prove that Sarah Palin is NOT an idiot, and that she in fact understands hard stuff like the economy, budgets, and that "reasearchy" thing that the Democrats are so good at.

However the twisted thing about this little spat is that it is NOT between Politifact and half term governor/ex-vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.  It is between a VERY insecure woman who "pretends" to be Sarah Palin on Facebook and an organization that is really only trying to hold politicians and others accountable for their misstatements, including Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and even President Obama. (Who, by the way, do NOT feel it necessary to challenge Politifact on their ratings.)

So yesterday RAM fired off another salvo against Politifact from behind the safety of her Palin Facebook facade. I will not bore you with the whole thing because it is once against jam packed with bits and pieces of patched together information designed to discredit Politifact and smear President Obama. However  I WOULD like you to read this very last paragraph:

(By the way, the Left sure gets wee-wee’d up when they’re called on something like this, eh? And here I am, thousands of miles away from DC out on a commercial fishing boat, working my butt off for my own business, merely asking the Democrat politicos and their liberal friends in the media: “What’s the plan, man?”, and they seem to feel threatened by my question. So, I’ll go back to setting my hooks and watching the halibut take the bait, and when I come back into the boat’s cabin in a few hours, I’ll log back on here to read their reply. I’ll have succeeded if they’re forced to finally reveal to Americans how they plan to increase taxes, and what they intend to do with our money. In the meantime, I’m catching fish.)

"...working my butt off for my own business."

"I'LL go back to setting my hooks and watching the halibut take the bait."

Time for a reality check here folks.  The person who wrote the above statement is NOT out fishing in Homer, Alaska!  They are NOT currently being filmed for a reality show!  They are not married to hunky Todd Palin! They are not the darling of the Teabaggers! And they are NOT named Sarah Louise Palin!

The person who wrote that is somebody who has slipped on the persona of Sarah Palin in order to FINALLY be taken more seriously in the world, and is using that facade to make herself seem more important, and more relevant, than she has ever felt just being plain old Rebecca Mansour.

If you Google Rebecca Mansour you will be hard pressed to find even ONE picture of her, however you will find dozens upon dozens of pictures of Sarah Palin. In many ways Mansour has absorbed Palin's persona and undoubtedly walks around feeling that her spirit lives within her and makes her somehow much more special than she feels all on her own. In the craziness that always seems to surround Sarah Palin, this person might be one of the most certifiably crazy.

Other politicians have people on their staff to help them write their speeches and articles for the papers, but I don't believe I have ever heard of one who has such a bizarre individual channeling them as completely and as consistently as RAM.  I cannot decide if she is more like Yolanda Saldivar or Buffalo Bill from the "Silence of the Lambs," who made a suit out of the skin of women he killed in order to make himself feel more feminine.

I don't often take it upon myself to give advice to Sarah Palin, but if you ARE reading this I would keep a very cautious eye on your "biggest fan", because there is something just not right there.  Of course if RAM is the one who has been monitoring my blog for Palin, then it is highly doubtful that she will ever even hear about this post.

Sarah Palin and Politifact are in a doozy of a catfight! Well Palin is in a catfight, I think Politifact is just trying to set the record straight.

The war of words began when Politifact labeled Sarah Palin's assertion on Fox News Sunday that "Democrats are planning the largest increase in American history" as a "Pants on Fire" lie:

If you let all the Bush tax cuts expire, the tax increase would come to just above 2.2 percent of GDP. Clearly, that would be larger than the Reagan tax hike of 1982. But it would be smaller than one of the tax increases passed during World War II -- the Revenue Act of 1942, which is estimated at 5.04 percent of GDP.

But again, letting all the tax cuts expire isn't the plan the Democrats are proposing, and it's not what Wallace asked Palin.

Palin said, "Democrats are poised now to cause this largest tax increase in U.S. history." She was asked about tax cuts for the top 2 percent. Either Palin is confused about the revenue numbers involved with extending the tax cuts, or she's willfully distorting the Democratic plans. We'll let you be the judge of that. Regardless, Wallace was very specific about asking her about tax increases for the top 2 percent. And that does not represent the largest tax increase in history. The unlikely outcome that she seems to be talking about -- that all of the Bush tax cuts will be repealed -- wouldn't be the largest tax increase in history either. Palin read the number on her hand correctly, but that's about all she got right. So we rate her statement Pants on Fire.

The thin skinned Palin simply could not let a non-partisan fact checking website get away with daring to challenge her on her poorly researched talking points.  After all, just WHO do they think they are!

So she got out her cattle prod and chased her Facebook ghostwriter out from under their desk and made them type out Sarah's indignant response:

Plan? What plan? There is no plan. All we have is smoke and mirrors based on an old Obama campaign pledge that if elected, he would exempt families making less than $250,000 a year from “any form of tax increases.”

There were some other words thrown in there as well, but I kind of believe that the above sentence was probably Palin's sole contribution to the post.  The rest was just stuff the ghostwritter found to try and make Palin look a little less bat shit crazy.

Now Politifact could not help but notice that THIS post was also not exactly based on facts either, so undoubtedly having just suffered an attack of hate filled e-mails from Palin's teeth gnashing supporters they decided to politely correct the Mama Grizzly:

We're not trying to antagonize Gov. Palin, but President Barack Obama has indeed published his proposals in some detail -- at least twice, in the annual budget documents that the White House releases.

The president's 2011 budget, for example, says on page 39, "Allow the Bush Tax Cuts for Households Earning More Than $250,000 to Expire."

"In the last Administration, those at the very top enjoyed large tax breaks and income gains while almost everyone else struggled and real income for the middle class declined. Our Nation cannot afford to continue these tax cuts, which is why the President supports allowing those tax cuts that affect families earning more than $250,000 a year to expire and committing these resources to reducing the deficit instead. This step will have no effect on the 98 percent of all households who make less than $250,000."

Apparently Politifact is not used to dealing with Caribou Barbie and her crazy ass supporters.  You can tell because they actually believe that using "facts" will somehow help them to win this argument.  Oh you silly, silly intellectuals you.  Sarah Palin does not let a little thing like "facts" get in the way of spinning her lies about President Obama. Silly gooses!

But now that the ball is in her court again Palin has a couple of choices.  She can ignore their fuzzy little ball(s) and move on to another conflict (This is considered a win by Palin standards). Or she can go on Fox News and slap a label on Politifact as nothing more than part of the "Lame stream media' and continue to make up more lies about our President and his policies at her hearts content (Also a win).  Or she can grab her Facebook ghostwriter by their hair, drag them back to their desk, and demand that they refute Politifact's so called "facts" with Palin's own less factual "facts" and continue this battle for a couple of more days.

Regardless of which one of these tactics she employs those of you at Politifact can rest assured that your e-mail boxes will start to fill up with all kinds of colorful suggestions and prayers for your slow painful death. That is just the Palin-bots special way of saying "You got our attention, now hurry up and die!"

As one who has had to have his e-mail box fumigated allow me to give you folks at Poltifact a helpful hint. If you see an e-mail in which ALL of the words in the headline are in capital letters, just delete it without reading it.  Even if you read it, it would not make a damn bit of sense, and it COULD cause you severe emotional harm.

Trust me on this.

Politifact's number one lie of the year is.....drum roll please....DEATH PANELS!!

Of all the falsehoods and distortions in the political discourse this year, one stood out from the rest.

"Death panels."

The claim set political debate afire when it was made in August, raising issues from the role of government in health care to the bounds of acceptable political discussion. In a nod to the way technology has transformed politics, the statement wasn't made in an interview or a television ad. Sarah Palin posted it on her Facebook page.

Her assertion — that the government would set up boards to determine whether seniors and the disabled were worthy of care — spread through newscasts, talk shows, blogs and town hall meetings. Opponents of health care legislation said it revealed the real goals of the Democratic proposals. Advocates for health reform said it showed the depths to which their opponents would sink. Still others scratched their heads and said, "Death panels? Really?"

The editors of PolitiFact.com, the fact-checking Web site of the St. Petersburg Times, have chosen it as our inaugural "Lie of the Year."

Quick! Somebody notify Sarah and tell her she finally WON something!

Though to be honest, when it comes to lying I don't see how anybody could beat her. I am just saying.