One of the many chancres on the genitalia of American journalism is the “fact check” scam. This is where reporters, who generally aren’t terribly well educated about anything, take it upon themselves to act as a truth squad to uncover falsehoods by political figures. Virtually without fail, even the simplest statements by Republicans are false.  Back in 2012, I grew so frustrated with the casual dishonesty of the Washington Post’s “fact checker”, Glenn Kessler, that I threatened, quite seriously, to ban anyone who quoted any of the media fact checkers in a comment:

The Pinocchio Test
We cannot fault the RNC’s math, as the numbers add up. But at this point this figure doesn’t mean very much. It may simply a function of a coincidence of timing — a brief blip that could have little to do with “Obama’s job market.”

If trends hold up over the next few months, then the RNC might have a better case. But at this point we will give this statistic our rarely used label:

TRUE BUT FALSE

But Kessler is not the worst. That title goes to the bunch of stooges and ignoramuses who populate the staff of PolitiFact.com, a spawn of the Tampa Bay Times.

Try these for examples.

PolitiFact rated a Rick Perry claim false after proving it was, in fact, true.

Enter Politifact to evaluate this claim. Now, you might think that Politifact’s job in this sort of scenario would be to determine whether border apprehensions did, in fact, drop by 74% during the course of the border surge. And lo, they did exactly that! And guess what they found, Perry’s claim was 100% correct! Surely, a “True” rating is around the corner for Governor Perry, right?

Wrong. Politifact instead scored a statement that they admitted to be factually true as “mostly false.”

How did they reach this bizarre conclusion? Well, they basically interviewed people who offered their opinions that other factors might have been completely or partially responsible for the (admittedly factual!) 74% reduction in border apprehensions, including seasonal fluctuations, economic factors, actions taken by the Mexican government, etc. They also add, in news that is completely irrelevant to the claim actually made by Perry that they were supposed to be evaluating, that some people consider other metrics to be better indicators of border security than border apprehensions.

PolitiFact’s idiot younger sibling, PunditFact, rated Sean Davis’s (The Federalist) claim that the Clinton Foundation spend 15% of its fundraising on actual programs as “mostly false” after they admitted the numbers were correct.

The claim contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, so we rate it Mostly False.

While lying about this, they also failed to mention that they are funded by one of the major donors to… the Clinton Foundation.

PolitiFact has the distinction of rating the exact same claim about ObamaCare as both 100% true and “Lie of the Year.”

The attempted a “fact check” of one of Erick’s tweets using THEIR interpretation of what Apple CEO Tim Cook has said about Indiana’s failed attempt to preserve Western Civilization.

The best you can say about PolitiFact and PunditFact is that they are amoral, political hacks who will tell any lie to advance their political agenda.

With that background,we can get onto their latest howler.

“The #IranDeal will facilitate and accelerate the nation of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons,” he said in a tweet on Sept. 9, 2015.

His comment caught our attention. We wondered whether it was accurate that the agreement would actually make it easier — not harder — for Iran to get a nuclear weapon.

Can we all agree that what [mc_name name=’Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’C001098′ ] said was an opinion? If you can’t do that, you probably should go shove your face into the food processor and be done with it. But there is never any reason too petty and dishonest to award a GOP figure a “false rating” and to protect Obama.

The first thing that is obvious is that the Lou Jacobson character doesn’t really understand the agreement.

If Iran did cheat, sanctions could be reimposed.

Let’s rate this claim “False.” The fact is that UN sanctions have been lifted and Iran has two allies on the UN Security Council to block reimposition of sanctions. Plus the Obama administration has told other nations that even sanctions were re-imposed that those ‘snap back’ sanctions would not affect any deals they had in place

Known nuclear sites would be monitored for 15 years to confirm compliance, and inspectors would have the ability to enter undeclared sites suspected of nuclear use, though with possible delays of up to 24 days.

Let’s rate this “False.” Military sites known to be nuclear related are off limits. US inspectors are not allowed to be part of the IAEA teams. Iran is allowed to do its own investigations. Iran has a seat of the arbitration board that determines if a site is covered. The IAEA says that 24 days is more that sufficient time to sanitize a site.

“The logic is astounding,” said Richard Nephew, a research scholar and program director for economic statecraft, sanctions and energy markets at Columbia University. “Fifteen years of restrictions and upwards of 20 years of enhanced inspections will hardly facilitate an Iranian nuclear weapon.”

Let’s rate this “False.” In April, the break out time for Iran to build a nuke was three months. This is 5 months later. We don’t have an inventory of Iranian nuclear material. Even under the treaty, break out time is one year. If this guy believes Iran will stick to this deal for 20 years, he is getting rogered by leprechauns.

“The terms of the deal require Iran to reduce its installed centrifuges by two-thirds, eliminate almost all of its stock of enriched uranium, modify its Arak reactor to drastically reduce its ability to produce plutonium, and to accept much broader inspections,” Bunn said. “Those actions would slow and impede any nuclear weapons effort, not facilitate and accelerate it.”

Let’s rate this “False.” Under the terms of the agreement, Iran is giving up some centrifuges (again, we don’t know how many they have) but the West is replacing them with more modern ones. As we don’t know what Iran’s actual stocks are, and we have no logical way of inspecting facilities, we don’t know if it is giving up anything near its stock of enriched uranium.

But compared to letting the deal evaporate, it’s hard to see how enactment of the deal makes it easier for Iran to get a bomb.

This is so stupid that it defies comprehension. Before the agreement, Iran was under a punishing international sanctions regime. It was a regime that punished companies and banks and individuals for dealing with Iran. Those sanctions have been removed and will not return. Iran will get over $150 billion in cash. The West is obligated to protect Iran’s nuclear facilities from attack, this would include cyber-attacks, like StuxNet, that brought their program to its knees. Western nations are clamoring to bring new technology to Iran.

The bottom line is that Ted Cruz expressed an opinion shared by a large number of highly qualified nuclear experts… like the head of the IAEA. Jacobson runs out and finds two people, obviously very left wing from the statements, who had NOTHING TO DO WITH THE AGREEMENT and uses their very ill-informed and agenda-driven opinion to call [mc_name name=’Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’C001098′ ]’s opinion false.

Let’s face it. Lou Jacobson and the whole bunch associated with PolitiFact and PunditFact are nothing more than dimwitted auxiliaries of the Democrat party. They lack the intelligence necessary to evaluate most of the subjects they purport to evaluate and the clearly lack the integrity to rule on the truth or falsity of anything.